Pawns
by meldahlie
Summary: "You don't just hand in your resignation to Voldemort. It's a lifetime of service - or death." Betrayals of the first war have cast long shadows over the children of a Death Eater ... shadows that Darken as Lord Voldemort returns... (OotP to DH)
1. The broken chess piece

The broken chess piece

The stair way was pitch black. No light penetrated by this third flight. Step, step, step, step.

_Grrr... rrrr... rrr... rrr... Grrr... rrrr... rrr... rrr..._

A steady growling noise from somewhere above kept time with the climbing footsteps, but Antigone Sutch did not hesitate. Step, step, step, step.

_Grrr...rrrr...rrr...rrr... Grrr...rrrr...rrr...rrr..._

She reached the top. It wasn't a landing, merely a step a little broader than the others. One solid door with no handle was straight ahead of her. She set her palm against the cold metal plate that could be felt in the centre of the door. It opened instantly.

_Grrr...rrrr...rrr...rrr... Grrr...rrrr...rrr...rrr..._

The noise continued louder in here; the marble continued to roll slowly back and forth across the bare wood floor. It was still pitch black. Antigone raised her wand, murmured_ "Lumos," _and crossed the small, dark room to the door beyond. She pushed it open.

"Hello, Tiggy."

There was light in here. Poor, straggling twilight from the small, grubby dormer window at the end of the room. A workbench littered with wood shavings was squeezed under the window, and the speaker sat at it. Her brother Abraxus.

"Hello, Rax."

All Sutches looked like that. The blue-black hair; the pale skin, the vague hint of mongoloid eyelids that came with their family's magic. _ All Sutches except..._ Tiggy gestured in vague inquiry towards the noise of the marble in the other room.

Rax shrugged. "It was all that would keep him quiet."

Tiggy nodded. "You hungry?"

"Little sister, there's no point in asking me that." Rax stood up and stretched cramped arms. "I'm _always_ hungry... I could eat a bear!"

It was a well-worn joke for a perpetual problem, and Tiggy smiled. "Bears were too expensive. I'll make soup."

Rax flicked his wand at the wood shavings, and they whirled in a flurry to the empty grate. "Need a hand?"

Tiggy shook her head. "The basket's not that heavy. You keep working."

She went back through the dividing door. _Grrr... rrr... rrr... rrr..._ The marble rolled unceasingly in the dark.

"Hello, Cles."

_Grrr... rrr... rrr... rrr... _ It came from somewhere in the far corner, and Tiggy raised her wand a little higher. The usual spot, behind the wing chair. It was Anticles Sutch's favourite hiding place.

"I'm going to make dinner now," Tiggy announced, for the sake of covering over the ceaseless noise, rather than because she expected any answer. "We're having soup. You like soup, don't you, Cles?"

_Grrr... rrr... rrr... rrr... _

"What did you do while I was out, then? Were you good?" Tiggy held her wand up to the old oil lamp on its hook from the ceiling. The oil was awfully low, and there hadn't been any for sale cheap anywhere for weeks, but she couldn't see to cook without some light. Not soup, anyway. "_Ignitio."_

She trimmed the wick to keep the light as low and economical as possible, and began to unpack the basket. "Parsnips. Parsnip soup. The mangy tops don't really matter." The old black cauldron swung off the crane and on to the table at her wand command, and two knives began to chop the vegetables. "Were you good?" Tiggy repeated. "Like Tiggy told you to be? Good for Rax? That's my fine little brother."

_Grrr... rrr... rrr... rrr... _

"Rax is very busy at present, isn't he? It's a big order, even if it won't pay very well. Pay something, won't it, Cles? Enough to buy more lamp oil. Not that you mind."

_Grrr... rrr... rrr...Click! _The marble had gone down a hole. Tiggy whirled around before any noise could come from behind the wing chair. "There now, there now... Tiggy get it back for you," she murmured soothingly, crouching down to peer about on the floor. There were so many mouse holes in the floor back here – it could have gone down any of them.

She poked her wand down a likely looking large hole. "_Accio marble?" _The hands searching for their marble reached suddenly out towards the wand, and Tiggy snatched it back from the hole. On no account must Anticles ever get hold of a wand. He could do quite enough damage as it was...

A warning whine rose as the hands felt only emptiness with no marble, the small body stiffened. "Oh, Cles..." With a resigned sigh, Tiggy rose and scooped him up onto one hip, her wand held at arm's length in the other hand. She carried him across the room to the mantelpiece and stowed the wand in the charm-protected pot from where no accidental magic could summon it. "Rax... I'm going to need a hand with dinner after all."

~:~:~

Long ago, life had not been like this. The Sutches made wizard chess pieces; had done so, father and son, for generations. Ever since, in fact, East-Indian-Trader-Sutch had brought home to England his Mongol wife. With her had come a large dowry, the faces, the chess pieces – and the magic. It was a strong line of magic: there were no squibs among the Sutches, and the magic on their chess sets did not fail. But they did not pay very well. Perhaps the chess pieces lasted too well. Perhaps the Sutches were always doomed to things that were too good – like the Mongol wife.

Within Tiggy's recollection was a time that was too good. There had been something else. Something that paid better. She had not really understood what. The something had involved people. People who came and went through their house – there had been a house, then. People who came and went by night; who might stay for a day or a night; who hung black hoods and masks up in the hall. Life had been happy.

And then the people had stopped coming. Father had stopped going out. And everybody, everywhere, was talking about The-Boy-Who-Lived, and You-Know-Who-Vanishing – whatever that meant. Tiggy didn't know Who. Rax never said whether he did. Cles was too little.

One more night, the People had come back. Low, angry voices. Sodden cloaks in the hall. Three men and a dark-browed woman, whose harsh voice penetrated even to the playroom on the top floor: _"...try to find him!"_

They only stayed one night. And in the next week good became too good. Everybody, everywhere, was talking about 'The Longbottoms.' Angry men in red, Auror robes came by day and took Father away. In the Ministry interrogation cells, Pericles Sutch, arrested Death Eater, had started to talk.

The Daily Prophet had proclaimed it as a triumph.

The next day Pericles Sutch was dead in his cell. And little, bright, innocently-three-year-old Anticles had answered the front door.

He had probably saved their lives. That magical bond demanded they protect what remained of his.

~:~:~

Rax opened the dividing door. "What's the matter?"

"The marble went down a hole," said Tiggy, gently swinging Cles to and fro on her hip. "I tried to summon it back and he grabbed for the wand. It's upset him."

"Oh." There was nothing more to be said. They both knew what Cles upset was like. Rax came in, shut the door and investigated the table. "Parsnip soup again?"

"Parsnips are cheap. Unless you fancy the surplus meat from Mother Hubbard's fingernail business?"

"Root veg is fine." He peered about, and jabbed his wand up at the lamp. "I can't _see_."

"Well, I could," Tiggy half-snapped. "Turn it down again, or we'll die in the dark."

"I'd rather take the risk of that in the future than be poisoned in the semi-gloom now," Rax retorted, lowering the light levels again. "Tell me where to find a potato."

"In the basket. The squashy things with eyes."

"I thought you said you didn't get anything from Mother Hubbard," said Rax so quickly they both burst out laughing.

"There now... there now..." The laughter had upset Cles, and Tiggy reverted to swaying him. "There, there..." she murmured soothingly again. It wasn't working. She changed the words:

"_Sssss... ssss... ssss... ssss... Sssss... ssss... ssss... ssss..." _A slow, strangled hissing noise. In the past it had been made by the scariest of the People as they came and went. Tiggy hated it: hated to hear it, hated to make it. It was the only thing that truly calmed Cles.

~:~:~

He had been like this since they had found him on the day Father died: the Dark Side's revenge on a man who had seen and heard and _said_ too much. Anticles had been missing for hours. Then he had reappeared on the doorstep. Bald. Blind. A shrunken baby who never grew or changed again. With a malicious touch, elephant-eared. And, whether by design or as a side effect, _mad._

Tiggy had occasionally wondered since what the _point_ of attacking Cles had been. Father had been killed already. But mostly, just as when she had been eight, that was how life was. That was how Cles was. He was still magic. All Sutches were. But he could not use it, or control it. Only his mindless, baby, moods brought it dangerously out. For fourteen years they had lived to avoid those. He was still their brother.

No Healer could touch that Dark Magic. No Healer would deal with a Sutch at all, they had found. Mother had grown ill and weak from the shock. No Healer would come to her. She had died. Everything had gone. All they had had left was Grandfather, who had lived in these two shabby rooms at the top of the stairs, in a house on Knockturn Alley.

Old Artaxerxes Sutch had not been pleased to have them. Three extra mouths to feed. School was out of the question. He could not manage 'the brat.' When Rax and then Tiggy turned eleven and the Hogwarts enquirers came, he locked the children in the attic. "He would teach them himself." The Sutches' reputation went before them. Nobody expected that the children of a self-confessed Death Eater, who had not given up with his Master's defeat, would do anything other than be trained in the Dark Arts. No more was said.

Grandfather was dead by the time they came regarding Anticles. It was Rax who locked the door and faced the intruders at the bottom of the stairs. "My brother will be educated as I was." There was no hope of that. But no-one was going to find out about Cles. No-one was going to take him away and lock him in a cell. Let them think what they liked...

Grandfather had not taught them Dark Arts, but what he had learned at Hogwarts seventy years before. Transfiguration, Charms – they were tricky because the practical magic upset Cles, especially if it went wrong. But History of Magic, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, even Herbology and Potions – all those were wonderfully possible to learn out of a book. They had to share Grandfather's old school books. Even fourth-hand textbooks from Whitburn & Thom's bookshop at the grotty end of Diagon Alley were too expensive. But they were still books. Tiggy loved books. They were friends, companions, comrades. If you only had a few, you could appreciate their characters. Bathilda Bagshot's _History of Magic_ was fat and dumpy, its spotted pages edged with gold like an old lady's hands with liver spots and gold rings. _Introduction to Arithmancy_ by Profezzorio Calcuolli was thin and upright: exactly Tiggy's idea of a stern schoolmaster. And _1001 Household Spells and Charms_, published 1903, out of which Tiggy had rapidly to learn how to help round the household, was simply motherly. It was big and sturdy; its faded red cover, and ripped spine sticking out like an apron, were reassuring; and the many previous owners' notes were like words of extra advice when you were in an especial fix.

Apart from schoolbooks, all Tiggy had were five volumes that had once been Grandmother's. An incomplete set of_ Young Witches of the World: _five thrilling if old-fashioned tales of witches who had wonderful adventures in different far-flung regions of the globe. Their endpapers were scribbled on, their dust jackets missing and covers faded – but Tiggy loved them. Their faded covers always seemed comfortingly like her own shabby clothes, and the characters in them had difficulties too. Even once she knew them by heart, Tiggy would pass the long hours when Cles was fretting overnight by rocking his trundle bed with one hand, and reading _Young Witches_ by the light of her wand in the other.

Her wand. It was their Mother's wand. Rax and Tiggy had had to share it, for wands again were too expensive, even if any wand maker would have sold a wand to a Sutch. When Grandfather had been dying, he had made Rax disarm him: "Then the wand will obey you."

The wand obeyed Rax. So did the chess pieces. 'Lessons' had only ever been in the mornings. In the afternoons, they had learned the Sutches' trade. Wood, bone, ivory... chess sets must be carved and old pieces repaired – that was the only way they could live. Rax was better at it than Tiggy. When Grandfather died, he became the breadwinner, the full-time carver. Tiggy was the housekeeper, and did the other work on the chess pieces – the rough cutting of blocks, the polishing, the taking-to-the-post.

Nobody looked at the shabby witch in the queue at the post office. Grandfather had taught them perfectly one more thing: To Mind their Own Business. It was the way to live on Knockturn Alley. To know your neighbours so far and no further. To have them know you so far and no further. They had no trouble. Actual Death Eaters were few in Knockturn Alley. So many years after, Death Eaters in general were imprisoned or dead like Father, or busy preserving the veneer of strict respectability which had kept them out of Azkaban. Knockturn Alley was not respectability. Here were the small and questionable, the petty crooks and dodgy pasts and unsavoury-but-not-convicted interests. The ruined family of a known Death Eater were let alone.

~:~:~

"_Sss... sss... sss..."_

Anticles was asleep before the soup was done, and Tiggy had to spoon it into him.

"We had an owl today," Rax remarked, scraping his bowl very thoroughly.

"Another order?"

"An _enquiry..." _said Rax, with sceptical emphasis. "Mr Dedalus Diggle wanted to know the price of a full set of giant garden chess pieces. Probably to work out whether it was worth buying a muggle set to enchant himself and risk the Ministry's wrath or not."

Tiggy peered round the small kitchen, and considered the size of the front room. "_How_ giant?"

"About two foot high, he said – if he likes the quote." Rax shrugged. "I'd better get the first batch of these Christmas cracker sets finished, just in case." He looked at Tiggy. "I'll need some light, little sister."

"Take it," said Tiggy, pointing at the lamp with resignation. "If you get a batch done for me to post, I can probably get some oil on tick from the post office witch's sister-in-law at the Apothecaries on Diagon Alley. I'll go and see tomorrow."

_A/N: Historical note for the non-British – the British Empire in India began via the private East India Trading Company in the 17th century. Their 'Traders' made vast fortunes and lived like royalty both in India and when they returned home. Such was East-Indian-Trader-Sutch – a most undeniable muggle!_


	2. The Dark pieces move first

The Dark pieces move first

Shutting the door meant shutting yourself into darkness. Sixty-nine steps of darkness to the bottom door and the comparatively bright light of Knockturn Alley. Half of Knockturn was shut up as usual, like the 'Nocturne' night club in Ali Bashir's rug shop basement. The other half, like Bitter & Pitt the greengrocers, huddled in their shop fronts away from the sharp morning frost. Nobody spoke to the short witch in the faded black cloak and hat as she walked along: a house-witch and her basket were too commonplace to be of note.

Down the Alley and left into Diagon past 'The Dragon & Warlock' pub. Long ago, in the time that had been too good, Antigone had come here with Father. A very, very little girl, aged maybe three. They had waited to meet Someone at the corner. The then youngest Sutch, already learning chess, had been enthralled by the Diagon Alley sign: "This is the way bishops move!"

The Someone, whose face she could not remember, had sneered mockingly:

"_Watch out for bishops..." _

A cold, frightening drawl, but Father had been there. Pericles Sutch had picked his daughter up and laughed. That corner was the only place Tiggy could still hear in memory Father's proudly booming laugh.

Tiggy was not waiting anywhere for anybody today. It was January, and the lamp oil she had got on tick for the Christmas cracker work had finally run out. She had to find more again – and it had to be cheap, too. Dedalus Diggle had apparently decided against a garden chess set or fixed his own, and the Christmas cracker work was over for the year. All Rax had at present were half a set of black obsidian pieces Mr Borgin of Borgin & Burke's wanted repaired in no particular hurry – probably not until their legitimate owner had given up all hope of recovering them.

Diagon Alley was crowded this morning, nearly as bad as in the school holidays. Sometimes, Tiggy reflected, you did have to move like a bishop on the diagonals along here. She cut from one side of the street to the other around groups of other shoppers talking. There seemed to be a complete blockage outside the Daily Prophet offices, but that didn't affect her. She crossed the cobbles again as she reached the crowd and pushed into the dark, mysterious smells of the cheap Apothecaries opposite.

"'Ello?" The wheezy old assistant witch peered out at her from behind a stack of barrels. "Can I 'elp you?"

Tiggy looked carefully round to make sure the actual owner of the shop wasn't there. He usually wasn't in the morning. And this transaction was private. Lamp Oil, _per se_, was permanently too expensive. But the oil from the bottom of certain potions ingredients' barrels wasn't – in fact, it wasn't even for sale. In the old oil lamp, it gave good light.

"Any empty barrels, Madam Aldred?"

Madam Aldred contorted her wrinkled face into a wink, and let out a wheezy chuckle. "That I 'ave. A keg of beetle eyes finished this morning. But better 'n that – sold the last Salamander tail... and '_E _says the oil in the jar's gone too cloudy to reuse... now 'ow's that?"

"'_E" _was Madam Aldred's employer, of whom she had a very low opinion. _'E_ didn't work 'ard enough; _'E_ didn't know 'alf of what went on in 'is shop; _'E_ 'ad funny ideas about sticking to the Ministry's rules; and above all, _'E_ didn't pay 'er enough. To get in a "little something" somebody wanted urgently or sell something _'E_ thought was rubbish was the spice of her life – particularly because it was paid for by buying 'baccy from the shelf behind the counter – 'baccy that was then transferred straight into Madam Aldred's pipe and pocket.

Tiggy considered the proffered salamander jar. "Two sickles worth."

"_Two sickles! _With 'baccy gone up and poor old Aldred pining for a whiff..." The old witch clutched the jar back as if it was precious treasure. "Five sickles worth."

It was all part of the well-worn barter ritual, and Tiggy tossed her head. "Three."

"Four."

Tiggy swooped. "Four-with-the-beetle-eye-barrel-as-well-Done." She banged the money onto the top of the nearest barrel, and cupped her hand over it. "How much 'baccy's that?"

" 'Ard bargain, 'ard bargain," Aldred grumbled laughingly. "You're a canny young lady. Aldred's little eye can see there's an extra knut in there..."

"That's for saving it next time," said Tiggy, watching carefully as the beetle keg was scraped into the salamander oil jar. "And four sickles is half a pound of 'baccy and no more that I've bought, Madam Aldred, so you weigh it out now."

The dark purple flakes went into a paper sack and vanished into the deep pockets of Aldred's apron. " 'Ave a nice day, then."

Tiggy squeezed out into fresh air and breathed deeply. It was easier when you actually had money, instead of having to argue that you'd just left a parcel at the post office with her sister-in-law to get paid by return, and the 'Madam' in front of 'Aldred' helped, but still...

She looked up to put her slightly-too-big hat straight – and a Face stared insolently back.

That Face.

That Person.

The woman who had come that one last time before Father was taken away – the dark browed woman with the harsh voice – was on a large poster in the Daily Prophet office window.

The small crowd outside surged and her line of vision to the poster was blocked. Tiggy dived forwards. Push– and shove- and squeeze... Nobody noticed she wasn't minding her own business, for everybody else was crammed together trying to look at that window too. They were all whispering together, but Tiggy wasn't listening. She made a final push through the front row – and stared.

The poster was an enlarged copy of the Daily Prophet front page. It bore ten photographs – ten captioned portraits. One woman, nine men. The woman – the woman was _Bellatrix Lestrange_. It had been Bellatrix Lestrange who had passed through their house... Tiggy stared slowly to the next, and the next, and the next...

_...Rabastan Lestrange... Rodolphos Lestrange... Antonin Dolohov..._

The crowd around her was whispering the names as if they were some sort of curse, but it wasn't the names.

It was the faces.

She knew every one of those faces.

How strange that they were silent. That the woman's- Bellatrix Lestrange's - harsh voice did not ring out across the street. Or Dolohov – sneering at this crowd that gaped before them. _Dolohov_ – the Someone who had met them at the Diagon corner. Their pictures jeered in silence – a silence that slowly seemed to mock the daughter of Pericles Sutch who had not kept silence, as she read the headline over the pictures:

_MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN._

_Mass breakout from Azkaban..._

_Buy a copy... _A sales wizard was hawking them on the far side of the crowd: "First edition! Latest news!" But Tiggy hadn't the money. They never bought a paper. "Only five knuts!" was always five knuts too many. The nearest she and Rax ever came to the latest news was the ancient, battered newspapers they bought for two knuts a bundle from Ali Bashir's rug shop, that were discarded rug packaging still fit to parcel chess pieces up in. They minded their own business; the outside world and the Daily Prophet could mind its... _But this was different..._

She turned and pushed blindly out of the crowd. Those ten pairs of eyes stared out at the crowds - that was why it was so crowded, then... but most of all they stared at her... All those people couldn't block those Death Eaters' eyes that watched her go.

_Watching her_... past Eeylops, past Gringotts, past the corner where Father had been – _with Dolohov..._

"You a'right?"

_~:~_

To an outsider, Knockturn Alley looked like a totally haphazard, law-less, order-less place, from its architecture and its plumbing to its businesses. When you grew up in it, when you lived in it, you knew better. Unspoken laws covered everything in Knockturn Alley – what to do, when to do it, and above all, how little to know about your neighbour's business. There were the strange systems of rents and sub-rents; the competing enchantments that held most of the buildings up; the balance of power on the protection rackets; and above all, the unifying need to protect this ghetto of unrespectability against any outside intrusion.

The bastion of that was Mother Hubbard. Mother Hubbard, whose fingernail business was merely a cover for the main look-out of the watch system that ran on Knockturn Alley. Nothing strange escaped those eyes. Minor, and she'd tackle it herself – odd behaviour or a lost visitor strayed in from Diagon Alley. Major, and Mother Hubbard would fold up her tray and be into the nearest shop in the whisk of a cloak. A flurry of warnings would scuttle like mice without doors or keys through the whole length of the Alley before the Ministry hit squad had managed to step round the gutter.

Tiggy had walked practically straight into her.

The suspicious leer peered up. "You in a hurry?"

Tiggy steadied the oil jar in the basket as discretely as she could, and dragged her mind back to the present. A false excuse to Mother Hubbard would attract more attention. The truth was her own business. Antigone drew herself back with dignity. "I saw a man on Diagon I didn't want to meet."

_Nine of them, in fact, and a witch too..._

It was an unusual answer from her, but many Knockturn Alley residents had similar, if less _Dark_ problems – generally financial. But Mother Hubbard's lewd reasoning wasn't going _that_ way. Her expression of suspicion was lifting into a knowing cackle: _Antigone Sutch was having an – entanglement...?_

Tiggy wasn't going to be shaken any more. She smiled condescendingly, stepped round the fingernail tray, and went up the alley and closed their door behind her.

At the top of the sixty-nine stairs, in the darkness, was the door – and the door frame. In the door frame was a slot, in the slot was a silver sickle. It was a very old Sutch tradition: a silver sickle over the door to keep ill luck out. This sickle was Grandmother Sutch's. Grandfather hadn't believed in it; neither did Tiggy. The Aurors had taken Father away through a door with a sickle over it; Anticles had stood on a doorstep under a sickle. It was simply there because it always had been there – and it was nice to know you were never completely destitute. Tiggy reached up, and eased the coin out. _Ill luck?_ The Sutches always suffered from 'too good' anyway. She went through the dark kitchen, across the work room to Rax's bench, and put the coin down on the wood.

"Will you go and get a paper, please, Rax?"

~:~

They lit the lamp with the first measure of salamander oil – because even the light under the window was too dim to read by - and spread the paper out on the kitchen table. Anticles had the sport supplement and sat behind the wing chair ripping it steadily to shreds. By the rip-rip-rip noise, Rax and Tiggy read.

There was nothing to say. Tiggy traced her finger under each photo, and Rax simply nodded. They both knew every one of those faces. _...Dangerous individuals... confirmed Death Eaters..._

There was no explanation. The Daily Prophet could offer no reason why ten Death Eaters should suddenly escape from Azkaban.

_...the same situation as with Sirius Black._

Tiggy turned the page to show the photo they had all seen so much of two years before. The bloodless face, the filthy hair – it had adorned every lamp post and window of Diagon Alley. Rax shook his head. "We never saw him. He never came... Never."

"But the others-"

"Yes, little sister." There was silence apart from Anticles' rip-rip-rip. Another mocking silence, heavy with the stares of the ten faces. Rax folded the paper carefully. "They don't know to come here."

_**A/N: Go on... you thought there wasn't going to be another chapter! **_**:P**

_**There are, in fact, twelve chapters to this fic, but for the sake of spinning out the suspense (or being smugly and irritatingly tantalising!) and because I occasionally have a real life, I'm publishing it in instalments!**_

_**Next chapter is "The Grandmaster" – expect it on the 12th!**_


	3. The Grandmaster

_A/N: If you know a Scouse/Liverpudlian accent, that is what a certain shop girl in this chapter talks like. She's modelled on two of my step-cousins – don't tell them!_

The Grandmaster.

Life went onward the same. During the day. The dull, end-of-winter days were just the same. A round of cooking and carving and making the lamp oil last. The shop in Hogsmeade that stocked their chess pieces had ordered another five sets in beech wood. Tiggy sawed the blocks and Rax spent all his hours whittling. There was nothing new. There was nothing to talk about.

But at night – Anticles was fretful.

Did he know something? No, Cles didn't know anything. He just had fretful spells occasionally, in which he would hide behind the wing chair all day long, and not want to come out at night. Tiggy sat up to hush him. But even when Cles was quiet, she lay awake, staring in the darkness at the wall of the built-in bed. They had no bedrooms. There was a curtained-off box bed in the work room, that had been Grandfather's and was now Tiggy's. Anticles' trundle bed was beside that, and Rax slept in a pile of blankets by the kitchen hearth. The wall was blank. Tiggy stared at those Faces:

Fourteen years. Azkaban had not been kind to those Death Eaters. Fourteen years. Father had been dead for fourteen years. And Mother. And the person who had been Anticles. And somewhere, somewhere _out_ of Azkaban, was the person who had done that.

They had known that all along. But those ten faces made you think of it. Was that person's life 'too good' now? Were they glad to see those ten faces? Did they know _why? _Was there a why?

Nothing more had been heard of the Azkaban escapees. They knew that without spending any more money on it – even though Tiggy had discovered that Rax had put the remaining twenty-four knuts back in the door frame – because it would have been on the headlines outside the Daily Prophet offices. And those were blank. The ten faces stared down from Wanted posters, but the headlines were full of – _nothing._

Tiggy presumed the WWN would be the same. They didn't have a wireless to find out. It had been sold long ago, the winter Grandfather had died.

~:~

The chess pieces were all done. Just before the lamp oil was. Tiggy counted out their remaining coins from the charm-protected pot on the dresser. Enough for the postage – and two knuts for the packing paper. Food for this week would depend on the inclination of Bitter & Pitt for selling 'on credit.' Tiggy gathered her worn cloak and basket, and set out down the sixty-nine steps.

Packing paper first. Ali Bashir's rug shop. The shop was dark inside, any light through the windows blocked by the rugs: rugs on the walls, rugs on the floor, rugs on tables, rugs in piles, rugs in rolls, rugs hanging up – even rugs festooned from the ceiling. Some light came through the cut-work doors of the fancy Arabian-nights lantern hanging drunkenly from the middle of the ceiling.

Enough light to see the few notices pinned up on a rug fastened on the back wall:

FLYING CARPETS ARE ILLEGAL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

_That didn't mean they wouldn't get you one._

ALL OUR RUGS ARE FULLY GUARANTEED

_From what, they didn't say._

DOXIES ARE NOT A PROBLEM WITH OUR RUGS

_Don't ask why._

OLD, VALUBLE RUGS REPAIRED AND RESTORED HERE

_Usually without the owner's permission._

And, beneath a calender with photos of dragons:

WE ARE EXPECTING NEW IMPORTS OF RUGS NEXT MONTH.

_Don't ask for your dragon eggs, as smuggled in the rugs, until then._

Tiggy looked around. "Hello?"

A rug hanging at the back wobbled, there was a muffled bumping noise and several less muffled swear words, and a girl's head popped out from behind the rug.

"Hel- Oh - Miss Sutch. Good morning."

Tiggy gave her a polite smile. "Hello." Benait Bashir was about the only person apart from Rax who spoke to her as a human being, instead of patronising her poverty or fearing her past.

~:~

It had been like that since Tiggy had once gone into Ali Bashir's to collect a bundle of newspapers just after the school holidays had started four years ago. A bright young witch in red and black block-print robes, a total contrast to the usual dusty gloom of the rug shop, had bounced forwards eagerly. "Can I help?"

Tiggy was completely taken aback. "I- I- I'm here to collect a bundle of packaging. Er- old newspaper..."

The girl had bounced off to the central table, where a few cash tins and receipt books still defended one corner against the onslaught of rugs piled across the rest of the surface. "Mm-mm-mm..." The girl flicked through a book. "Oh, 'packaging materials, two knuts, for a Mr Artaxerxes Sutch'?" she read out questioningly.

They hadn't changed that in the three years since Grandfather had died, because Ali Bashir knew whose granddaughter she was. It suddenly seemed stupid. Tiggy nodded. "Yes. But you could put it down in my name from now on. Antigone Sutch."

The girl produced a quill from behind her ear, and began to write that down. "An-Ti-Go-Ne Sutch... I'm Benait. I'm Ali's step-daughter. I'm what you get from now on here, too. Isn't it nice when you finally get out of school and get to join the family business?" She grinned comradely at Tiggy. "Even just as the odd job girl? I've wanted to for ages and ages and _years,_ really..." she jabbered happily on, "all the time at school listening to teachers nagging you about your homework, and you're thinking – _I just want to work with those rugs...! _– I don't want to do frilly charms and make useless fancy potions – just teach me a rug cleaning solution! Of course," she giggled suddenly, "I know, I know, Potions should be sacred to a Slytherin..." She wedged the book back on the corner of the table. "What house are you from?"

Tiggy answered without thinking. Grandfather had drummed it into them. "The Sutches have always been in Slytherin-"

She stopped in horror. In eight years the lie had never been caught. Most people drew their own conclusions and steered well clear of you, but this girl – was a Slytherin...

...and had flushed in sudden embarrassment:

"Oh! Oh, Miss Sutch, I- I didn't realise... oh how- how very, oh- rude of me... I didn't- don't really remember the, er- _older years_ in our House, when I first started... I oh- am so sorry- oh, dear..." She fetched the bale of newspaper in a state of utter confusion, and Tiggy had had to remind her of the two knut charge and leave the shop to ease the embarrassment.

Tiggy had never had the heart to tell Benait they had both been eighteen then and were both twenty-two now. She had stayed fixed in Benait's eyes as 'An Older Slytherin,' to be addressed with the friendliness due to House-mate-hood and the respect due to adulthood. Explanation was- impossible. The real reason – had been because the real reason was unspeakable, must be concealed and defended and the remaining shattered fragment of his life preserved. Which left only what the rest of the world thought: that they were too Dark to be willing to go to Hogwarts. And that - Tiggy had no sentiment about Hogwarts, or her education. It was a thing that was. Neither did she care that by Benait's reckoning she, Antigone, would count as nearly thirty. But it was nice to have somebody who didn't see you as a Death Eater's daughter.

~:~

This morning, Benait looked disgruntled. "He is," she said, putting her magazine down. "They're right. He's mad."

"Mad?" Tiggy asked absently, thinking of Anticles. "Who's mad?"

Benait sighed. For a Slytherin who lived and worked on Knockturn Alley, she had a curious obsession: _ "Harry Potter..."_ She read and saved any mention of his name in the Daily Prophet; had suffered agonies over the interview by Rita Skeeter and the whole TriWizard tournament; and would sigh with swooning regret that she had left school _'too early..._' All of which she invariably poured out to 'Miss Sutch' over each bale of newspaper, followed by a hasty apology for her youthful stupidity. This morning, however, she stuffed the magazine with her hero's picture on the front roughly aside. "He's in The Quibbler, _The Quibbler_, I ask you... ranting on about You-Know-Who coming back..."

"_What?"_

"Yeah...you know, the stupid rumours the Ministry's been having to deal with all year, that You-Know-Who is 'active again' or something, even though nobody's died or seen him or anything funny happened at all..."

The room was cold. And grey. And mockingly heavy... From a long way away, Benait's voice rambled on:

"he says _He's_ alive again – not really been dead..."

..._Bellatrix Lestrange who had gone through their house '...to try to find him!'..._

"and that He's got this huge snake that He can _Talk_ to..."

… _those hissing noises Anticles calmed for... _

"and that the Death Eaters have all regathered..."

_...those ten faces... _

"and he even says Sirius Black's innocent!..."

..._Rax looking down at the photo – 'we never saw him'... _

"Bunkum."

_Were people blind?_

Benait produced the usual bale from under a pile of rugs. "I'd hoped and hoped they weren't right and he wasn't mad, but that... I don't want to know, any more. Gives me the creeps – fancy having delusions like that... You-Know-Who, I _mean... _Here-" She picked up the Quibbler hastily and thrust it under the top string of the bundle. "Use it for packing, please, Miss Sutch. I don't want it in here."

Tiggy gave her the two knuts and took the parcel and walked out of the shop. She had not read the article. It _was_ the Quibbler. But when it came to The-Boy-Who-Lived, Benait repeated what she'd heard. And that – that made cold, clear, blinding sense of – everything.

_He's alive again... _

Somehow Tiggy was in the kitchen, somehow she had lit the lamp, and a strange voice that sounded hardly hers called "Rax! _Rax! Now!"_

Rax, varnish and paintbrush in hand, had got quite cross at being so startled before Tiggy could manage to be coherent enough to explain. Then he stared at the Quibbler. "Well... I can't leave this." He waved the brush half-crossly towards the work room. "Come and read it out loud while I get these last pieces varnished."

Rax worked at one end of the bench, Tiggy perched on the other and held the Quibbler up to the light. "We don't want the latest news on Crumple-horned Snorkacks... _Harry Potter: He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the night I saw him return..."_

Whatever her reputation for sensationalism, Rita Skeeter was a good writer. It grew harder and harder to read. Tiggy could see not only the scene Harry Potter described, but the same ring of cloaked, masked, hooded figures fourteen, fifteen years before. A ring with Father in it. Father- _Father_ had apparated like that; _Father_ had bowed and crawled and kissed the Dark Lord's robes; _Father_ had known those Death Eaters by names as well as faces; had stood with them, had served with them...

And one of them had struck him down, and returned unharmed to stand beside Father's empty space, remorseless...

Tiggy choked out the last few lines, and looked up at Rax. He was staring quite rigidly out of the tiny dormer window. Tiggy swallowed. "Benait says everybody says he's mad or something."

"Mad?" Rax echoed sceptically. They knew mad. The small, dim room was very silent. Rax got up and knelt down beside Tiggy's bed, and pulled out the drawer beneath it.

Tiggy stared. "Rax?" In the drawer were blankets, nothing but their spare, somewhat worn and frayed but precious, blankets – and the two knuts Tiggy had saved towards buying Rax a bar of chocolate for his birthday. But Rax didn't look into the contents. He took the drawer right out. From behind it, he took out a dark wooden box. Memory stirred. Long ago, Tiggy had seen that box – seen it lying haphazardly on the floor after Father had been arrested, amidst the smashed jumble of books and papers where his whole study had been torn apart by the Aurors. "Rax?"

The box came open at his touch. A faint smell of musty leather, long shut in. And he took out a book. A fat book, bound in leather that must once have been white but was now a hideous dead-skin colour. He opened it. Tiggy craned her neck to see the title: "_Brewes of Lyfe_. _ Rax? _ What _is_ that?"

Rax looked up from running his finger down the contents page. "When I asked Grandfather that, he said 'death.' It was Father's. It used to live on the top shelf over the mantelpiece, if you remember."

Tiggy strained to recall anything other than the smashed-up study. "Vaguely. He had a row of books, and the pot that he kept chocolate Galleons in. Mother always said we weren't to touch anything up there." She looked at the book she hadn't known they had, the book that was no way a friend or companion or comrade. "And I always thought it was because of the chocolates... What have you got it for?"

"_We_ have got it," said Rax slowly, "because F- Grandfather said it would do less harm here than if it went out into the world, and it is fireproof. What I am _looking _for is... here." He opened the book carefully, and smoothed the heavy parchment page flat. "Yes. Bone, blood and flesh... Harry Potter's not mad. 'Brew of Restoration.' He's described it perfectly."

The wizard who had trained his followers to kill traitors was alive again, had his followers again, and even the Benaits of the world believed the eye-witness was making it up. If the famed fifteen year old who had defeated the Dark Lord once could not do anything, what could two Sutches, bankrupt and half-educated, do against the Dark...

There was a funny noise in the kitchen. Tiggy dived off the workbench, across the three strides to the dividing door, and wrenched it open – to a snow-storm of shredded paper. Anticles had got over his fretful spell: she had left the parcel of paper on the kitchen floor, and Cles had torn it to shreds. The floor, the table, every shelf and surface, drifting clouds in the gust of air...

"Oh, ho ho ho..." Rax was laughing behind her, Tiggy leaned on the door frame and laughed helplessly herself, and a flurry of paper rose from a small figure tossing armfuls behind the wing chair.

Harry Potter was not mad. But perhaps Anticles had known that they needed to laugh.

~:~:~:~

_**A/N: Okay, okay, I have relented! Expect chapter 4, "Beginner's opening" on Tuesday.**_


	4. Beginner's opening

_**A/N: If you were wondering where the 'adventure and suspense' had got to, wait no longer!**_

Beginner's opening

The rain drummed heavily on the roof. There was a whine behind the wing chair. "There _isn't_ any more," said Tiggy, as calmly as she could, for the fifth time that morning.

The marble lay neglected on the hearth. Anticles had a new obsession. To shred paper. And it had turned out there were only so many times _Reparo_ could be used on an old sheet of newspaper before the ripped up fragments refused to go back together. This morning, they were out of paper.

They had had to put anti-summoning charms on all the books. The _Quibbler_ and the _Prophet_ with the Death Eaters' escape were shut away in Rax's box. And there was nothing to do but explain patiently, to someone who could not understand. And you could not get cross with Anticles, because then he would get upset, and then there would be a tantrum, and then there would be explosions.

Tiggy put her wand in the pot on the mantelpiece, picked up the marble off the hearth, and put it firmly down in front of Cles. "Come on, now." She guided one small hand out to it, made the hand roll the marble to the other, made the other hand roll it back. "Come on, Cles... you can hear it roll."

Anticles seemed to give in. _Grrr...rrrr... rrr...rrr.. Grrr...rrrr...rrr...rrr_

Tiggy got up and brushed the dust off her robes. The floor needed sweeping. She hadn't done that yet this morning. And the dishes need – _Crack!_

The marble had been hurled with more than natural force across the kitchen. Tiggy picked it up and put it back on the hearth. The paper obsession wasn't budging, then. "You did have to pick today, didn't you, Cles?" She sighed, because there was no point in being cross. "I know. You can't help it."

Tiggy swivelled the wing chair round slightly. The dishes and the floor could wait. They weren't mad. "Come on, then." She picked Cles up, sat him on one knee, and began to bounce him. At least he was small.

"Hold on, now. Bumpety-bumpety-bumpety-bump. A knight on his horse goes bumpety-bumpety-bumpety-bump. A knight on his horse..."

Knight's move: three squares up and one across. Three bounces and one to the side. Father had played it with each of them as toddlers – all the different chess moves, at different speeds of bouncing. The knight had been Anticles' favourite. It was nicer than the hissing noises. "Bumpety-bumpety..."

"Weren't you going out to get bread?"

Tiggy looked up. "I _was..._"

Rax considered the scene from the dividing door. "Still wants paper?"

"Still wants paper. Bumpety-bumpety-bumpety-bump..."

"Would wood-shavings work?"

"If he starts eating wood..."said Tiggy with a sudden desire to laugh, "we'd, er..."

Rax chuckled. "We'd be homeless _and_ bankrupt. No bread at all?"

"And raining krups and kneazles."

"I don't shrink. I'll go."

"But Rax–" Tiggy stopped bouncing Cles for a moment in protest. "Your cloak's worse than mine...He'll – oh, bumpety-bumpety-bumpety-bump – settle down – bumpety-bumpety – soon – bumpety-bumpety–"

"When you can wash the dishes." Rax took his grey cloak off the hook by the door, and shook it out. It was threadbare. It was Grandfather's. "Nobody should be looking closely enough to see where you mended it. It's not like I'm busy working." He took down the money pot. "Is this all?"

Tiggy nodded in time to the bumpeting knight. The outside world seemed to have spent _its_ last sickle on the _Quibbler._ For a month, there had been no more orders."Go to Burntwells, by Whitburn and Thom's. They have yesterday's bread cheaper than anywhere else. And Rax–" Tiggy remembered hastily. "Go and have a look in the blanket drawer." She grinned at him. "Go on."

He came back. "Two knuts?"

"Happy Birthday. Get a bar of chocolate."

"_Little sister..."_ Rax shook his head at her.

"You're only twenty-five once. Now go and get wet on purpose."

Only twenty-five, with the Dark Lord restored and your brother mad, once. Thank goodness.

They didn't celebrate birthdays any more. They couldn't afford to. And they couldn't count Anticles' birthdays, really. Shrunken three, going on eighteen. Anticles' third birthday had been the very last one. The last proper birthday: a party and presents and cakes, in the last September that had been too good. They had all been in bed before the little man had come that day. Stooping, shuffling, cloak pulled up and head down as he scuttled through the hall. Tiggy had come downstairs, feeling sick from party food. Mother had taken her into the kitchen; the little man had scuttled into the study behind Father. The memory of his face had gone. He wasn't one of the Death Eaters who had escaped. Tiggy thought vaguely of a pointy, mousy face... but perhaps that was just imagining from his funny walk.

It was all gone. Tiggy bounced the little body on her knee more slowly. Anticles seemed to be falling asleep. "Bumpety...bumpety...bumpety...bump. Watch out for bishops, Anticles." She put him down behind the wing chair again, took out her wand and lit the fire to heat the dish water.

~:~

Even without the noise of the rain you could not hear someone on the stairs. The door opened silently. You heard only their sudden step into the kitchen. "Hello, Rax."

SLAM! Tiggy spun round. "What–?"

Rax shoved his hood back, and held out the shopping basket. "Bread. I hurried but it might be wet."

Tiggy shrugged. "We can toast it." Rax still stood there in his dripping cloak. "What's the matter? Oh, stand still. _Aridus...Aridus? Aridus!"_ Her wand took three tries to co-operate. It didn't always work well, used at Rax.

He slipped off the dry cloak. "I went to get the chocolate," he said, somewhat automatically. "After the bread. There was hail. So I stepped into 'The Dragon and Warlock.' To try and keep the bread dry."

Tiggy investigated the basket and nodded. "You did. It's dry."

"And–" Rax continued as if she hadn't spoken. "And there were two men in there. I didn't know them. But they looked like they'd seen a – forget a Grim, they looked like they'd seen a Basilisk..."

Fourteen years had swallowed up Pericles Sutch.

Fourteen years had returned his son.

Tiggy had never thought how much Rax looked like Father.

**~:~:~:~**

_**A/N: Beginner's opening is a start-of-game play in chess where poorly moved pawns lead to disaster very rapidly... Next move in this game Saturday, 20th: "Dark Gambit"**_


	5. Dark gambit

Dark gambit 

"_It is with great regret that we announce the wizard styling himself as – well, you know who I mean – has returned and is active again," a harassed Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge told reporters yesterday..."_

It was June. It was hot. Knockturn Alley was its usual summer firebox. And in Ali Bashir's rug-festooned shop, Tiggy could hardly breath. It didn't seem to be affecting Benait, who lowered the _Prophet_ with a beaming smile. "Isn't it _wonderful?_"

She didn't wait for Tiggy to stop staring blankly at her, searching for a non-committal noise while the Dark more than ever seemed to be pressing down. "I mean..." Benait shook her head happily. "He _wasn't _mad..."

"Yes," said Tiggy weakly.

_Did Benait __**ever**__ take anything seriously? Was she __**ever**__ troubled by the prospect of the Dark side?_

She and Rax had known Potter wasn't mad for over three months. She hadn't come back in here since the day Benait had given her the Quibbler, because you could not explain how they knew Potter wasn't mad. She had only come in now to avoid a cluster of cloaked figures blocking the Alley as they spoke to Mother Hubbard. And Benait had promptly waved yesterday's _Sunday Prophet_ at her. "Look! Look!"

At least her enthusiasm had saved them five knuts, for Benait had happily read out the whole nine pages. Tiggy had simply stood and listened. The heavy, pressing feeling might just be the hot, stifling shop. This news was – was only that the rest of the world had learned what she and Rax already knew. Some of it. The outside world, even Benait, did not _know_ those Death Eaters. They did not know about the two men in the 'Dragon and Warlock.' They did not have People who would be looking for them – as Pericles Sutch's family. They did not know what it was to go out trying to be even more unnoticeable than usual; or to be Rax, and stay in. They did not know of the owl, and the parchment it had brought...

"I'm so glad..."

_People are going to die... like the man we never saw..._

"...It makesme feel bad, though." Benait looked down at the page with the reprinted _Quibbler_ article with a regretful face. "'Cause – 'cause I wrote to him and said he should take a course of shock spells..." She looked up at Tiggy anxiously. "D'you think I should write and apologise?"

"I– I– expect he won't mind by now," Tiggy murmured faintly. "Have you got any packaging?"

"Oh, Miss Sutch! I'm so sorry! Keeping you!" Benait leapt into action and dragged a small bale of paper out from under the table. "I didn't think – and nobody else wanted to know – taking up your time – I'm dumb... Two knuts. It's not much – there weren't many d– wasn't much packed in the rugs the last two loads." She grinned apologetically at Tiggy. "You'll have to get out of here before I start talking again."

Tiggy went out. Up the three flights of darkness that separated their lives from the outside world. Through the door. Into the workroom.

"The owl order."

Rax looked round.

"He's been arrested. As an active Death Eater."

~:~

The owl order had come a month ago. Addressed to _"A. Sutch & Co., Wizarding Chess Makers."_ That had been what Grandfather traded as. They had not needed to change it.

A handsome, eagle owl quite different from the usual well-worn business or family owls they got. Thick parchment, water-marked and monogrammed. An order for a new, complete set. Large, eight-inch scale, in pure ivory. Quotation requested by return owl, for advance deposit to be forwarded. It was a good order.

The signature was Lucius Malfoy.

Tiggy had handed it back to Rax without a word. There was great silence in the kitchen.

If Potter was not mad, Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater. A Death Eater who had been free after Father had died...

"More of an invitation than an order," said Rax eventually.

"I would say it _was_ an order," Tiggy contradicted.

"To coercion, torture and murder." Rax nodded slowly. He looked at the parchment again.

"Bespoke eight-inch ivory." He shook his head. "You would think they would have tried it with a ten Sickle repair in beechwood."

"Perhaps they think a hundred galleons is enough _weregild," _said Tiggy dully.

"Perhaps..." Rax looked round, and Tiggy followed his gaze. At the small, shabby kitchen. At the straggling daylight through the door from the work room. At the mended cloaks on the door. At her own shabby robes. At Anticles...

Rax got up, and re-rolled the parchment. "There's the owl."

"Send him back."

"He'll want a reply."

The Dark... the Dark was pressing in on these two, shabby rooms. Perhaps even this could be too good. The Dark side knew – or guessed, but could easily check – that the Sutches still made chess pieces. They could not write 'Closed' or 'Gone Away' or 'Unknown' on the parchment. To destroy it... left them with Lucius Malfoy's owl. To accept was... to accept the order. To refuse was...

And the owl might be charmed to trace them anyway.

Rax drew his wand. "_Finite Incantatum." _The owl did not stop looking haughty for being cracked sharply on the head with a wand. Tiggy quietly opened the window. "Go," said Rax firmly. "There is no reply."

~:~

For a month they had waited. Now – if Lucius Malfoy had hunted them for private gain or fear or revenge – if he had been in the 'Dragon and Warlock' that day – they might be safe.

For the moment.

Except – they both knew far more Death Eaters than that.

There had been two men in the 'Dragon and Warlock.'

_**A/N: For Benait's letter, see 'OotP' chapter 26, "Seen and Unforeseen"**_

_**Next move will be made on Tuesday – "The bishop and two pawns."**_

_**For those who have asked where Bellatrix Lestrange has got to, please rest assured that she will appear, in person, in chapter 7 onwards!**_


	6. The bishop and two pawns

The bishop and two pawns

Tap! Tap! Tap!

You cannot go away when you have nowhere to go to. You cannot stop working if you have no money. And you cannot stop getting owls if you run an owl-order business, even if someone has tried to entrap you with one.

There was nothing to do but open the window.

Tiggy steadied the owl on one hand, and carefully closed the window again with the other. Rax had appeared from the kitchen in an instant at the noise. The briefest of glances meeting – Tiggy gave a half-smile of acknowledgement – and the owl held out its leg.

It was a plain, middle-aged sort of owl, tawny, vaguely familiar. Tiggy put it gently down on the back of the rickety chair that passed for an owl stand, and came back to watch as Rax undid the scroll of parchment. Business had always just been – business; Cles and the porridge were probably getting into all sorts of trouble in the kitchen; but just now – she needed to know.

Rax's frown cleared. "Scrivenshafts. The usual five sets before Hogwarts starts." He looked up at Tiggy standing there. "It's all right, little sister."

Except the non-stick charm had finally worn off the old black cauldron.

There was no choice but to eat the porridge. This owl was the first order they had had for the three weeks since the Ministry announcement – and the previous month since Lucius Malfoy's... 'order.' They had – lived. On every last knut. The two knuts that had not bought the bar of chocolate. The twenty-four knuts out of the door frame. And this week's bread had come on credit.

Rax chewed thoughtfully on one of the black bits. "Three galleons a set..."

Tiggy nodded. Five sets... fifteen galleons would be riches, would pay the bread bill and buy food for weeks – if they didn't mind old parsnips - and pay for owl post and packaging newspaper and a few spare sheets to amuse Cles and possibly even rise to a small jar of Restorative Blacking Paste to repair the cauldron... And Scrivenshafts usually paid by return.

Of course- that assumed the order was what it said it was. That it was not a forgery or a front or a... But- they could not worry over what the people they dealt with regularly might be. You learned that on Knockturn Alley. Don't Mind Their Business. Until now it had always just meant not seeing dragon eggs...

"Beechwood isn't hard to carve." Rax's suddenly decisive voice broke into Tiggy's musings. "And we have the wood. We can get them done in a week if we both work on them."

"Rax!" Tiggy protested, startled. "I'm hopeless-"

"Your pawns are fine," said the full-time carver flatly. "If you do the rough shaping of all the pawns, while I do the main pieces, I can finish them."

She shrugged in agreement. They could not afford to do anything else. "Cles?"

Somebody had to keep an eye on Cles, do something to keep him out of mischief. As he promptly demonstrated by dropping his porridge bowl on the floor.

"_Reparo."_ Rax stood up. "We don't really _need _that copy of the Prophet any more."

~:~

The bludger in this scheme was the weather. They had magical wood-carving tools for two: Father's set and Grandfather's set. There was just about space at the workbench for two. But the light in these mists...

"It's no good." Rax put a second pawn of Tiggy's carving back after a quick test charm for sentience. "You've carved too deeply and hit the heartwood."

"I'm trying my best!" Tiggy snapped, sucking a deeply-carved thumb crossly. "I keep hitting me, too! So there's no need to sound so superior-"

"I'm not blaming you." Rax put wand and tools down on the work bench with a weary clunk. "It's this half-dark gloom – I've nearly gone too deep on several as well." He tilted his stool back with an ominous creak to stretch his legs. "We can't carve by wand light. How much lamp oil have we got left?"

Tiggy looked round at the old cuckoo clock on the wall. They still had that because it wasn't worth selling: it had never struck the proper hours and the cuckoo had long since lost his voice entirely. The hands pointed to eleven, which was probably about right. The lamp – at eleven o'clock in the morning? She got up. A shallow trickle of oil remained; a weak pool of golden light swung onto the work bench as she hung the lamp on the ceiling hook above.

"I'll go get more oil. Aldred doesn't know we owe Bitter & Pitt _and_ Burntwells – I should be able to get it on tick."

~:~

At least in these mists you could wrap up well and pull your hat down low. This slightly-too-big hat came down very low anyway. Rax put the lamp out and came to the door.

"Don't stand there..." Tiggy tugged the door irritably out of his grasp. "The draft will blow Cles' paper away and then we won't be able to put it back together. Don't waste time. I won't be long."

Swirling mist down Knockturn Alley, swirling mist up Diagon... People must have lit their fires against the unseasonable chill, for wafts of bitter coal smoke made darker eddies in the fog. Tiggy had to stop and peer to be quite sure her feet had led her to the right place – and a tall, burly figure loomed darkly out of the apothecaries. You couldn't see anyone clearly, and the figure didn't seem to see her at all. Tiggy drew herself to one side, and his heavy, lumbering tread vanished into the mist. Not _'E,_ then... She stepped forwards and pushed open the door.

"Oh – 'ello..."

Aldred was standing right inside the door. "I've 'ad a visitor." She shuffled back to let Tiggy in, and patted a bulging apron pocket with a wheezy chuckle. "A nice chap, 'e was. You only jus' missed 'im. A shame... 'cos 'e'd 'ave been glad to meet _you_...

"...E was asking," Aldred continued cheerily as she squeezed back behind the counter, "if I could get 'im iv'ry dust, special for 'is potions, so I told 'im 'bout you an' 'ow you bought iv'ry sometimes, an' 'ow you was 'ard up an' bought old oil, so I 'spected you'd be 'appy to sell 'im iv'ry dust. He said that was really 'elpful; worth a lot o' 'baccy to 'im, an' e'd be back..."

Tiggy stared at the wrinkled, untroubled face.

_...e'd be back..._

"Well, I only stopped by to see if you were in need of 'baccy," she said lightly. "If you were, I could have bought something. As you're not, I don't need it. I've got plenty of oil left." She smiled patronisingly. "Morning, then. _Aldred_."

The basket was heavy. Even without any oil for light. Tiggy lugged it slowly down Diagon and up Knockturn and started calmly but wearily up the stairs.

_...so I told 'im 'bout you..._

Could she blame Aldred when Father had talked?

Aldred had talked for a pocket full of 'baccy. Father... had never smoked purple tobacco. That day at the 'Dragon & Warlock' corner – the day with Dolohov and the bishops – they had stood outside because Father didn't like the thick green smoke inside the pub; and said it was bad for little girls. That was beside the point. Father – had talked. And Grandfather, for all he had blamed his son and daughter-in-law's deaths on Pericles' failure to mind his own business, had hated the Ministry too.

Six years of his half-started comments had left Tiggy in little doubt over what Barty Crouch's DMLE had done to make captured Death Eaters talk.

The top door opened to the touch of her hand to the silver plate. There was a small whimper from the far corner. Tiggy set the basket down on the table, reached into the darkness to scoop Anticles up, and sank into the old wing chair. "We'll die in the dark, hey, Cles? Die in the dark... just like you." She smoothed the drooping elephant ears. "Darkness, Cles... darkness... darkness..."

"Antigone?"

Light. Rax. His wand lit. He stared at them, puzzled, from the dividing doorway. "Cles has been very good, he's been putting wood shavings down mouse hol- what's up? Little sister?"

"Oh-" Tiggy shrugged to try and keep off the brittle anger that threatened to break the weariness. "We'll die in the dark. Someone was pumping Aldred."

She pulled a bitter smile. "Very happily."

**~:~:~**

_**A/N: next chapter 'En Passant' on Friday...!**_


	7. En Passant

_En passant._

The house was quiet. Apart from Anticles' occasional whine, and the flap of his ears listening to Tiggy working silently about the kitchen. Wood shavings down mouse holes was proving a very enduring entertainment, and the mice fortunately cleared them before Cles had filled any one hole. There was time – time, and quiet. Time to wash the dishes and sweep the floor and cook the never changing round of soup and porridge – by wand light. Time, by wand light, passed slowly – each distinct, ticking second in these two quiet rooms under siege. There was nothing to say. Except what Rax had said when Tiggy had told him about Aldred:

"Zugzwang."

Every move disadvantageous. Every move down into darkness – sixty-nine steps into pressing, stalking, ever-encroaching Darkness...

~:~

One repair job came in. The same flicker of fear with an eagle owl tapping at the window. _"A. Sutch & Co., Wizarding Chess Makers,"_ in a quavery old hand. One Galleon repair in mahogany. Somebody had stepped on the white knight. Payment enclosed. Tiggy peered over Rax's shoulder at the letter's signature. "_Tib. Ogden_?"

A. Sutch and A. Sutch looked at each other.

Rax nodded. There was no need to say any more. Grandfather had often spoken of Tiberius Ogden as a 'crony' of Albus Dumbledore. He was – probably – unlikely to be hunting for the Dark.

But everything still led down into darkness. The mahogany white knight still needed packing paper to go home in, or he'd be coming straight back for more repairs. Tiggy took down her cloak, pulled her hat very low. The mists were still lingering into the autumn.

"And it's terrible," said Benait. " 'Cause nobody wants to buy rugs – or anything else. I don't know why. You'd think a nice warm red wool rug would cheer you up against all these bloody mists... D'you want one, Miss Sutch?" She grinned without a pause. "All I've had in a fortnight was two boys. They thought they were smart, but all they really wanted to know was whether I'd stolen their rug, for pete's sake. I've got a shop full of rugs!" Benait waved both arms around dramatically. "What would I want somebody else's old rug for? It's like the Ministry Enforcers – in their artistically old robes and shiny desk-white hands – they think they can get anything out of a girl just for smiling at her. Beats me."

_Two boys? _Tiggy tensed. The shadows were deeper in the corners of the rug shop. Two boys... two men in the Dragon and Warlock... "I'll just have paper today, please, Benait."

"You can't cover your floor with that," Benait retorted, with a grin that meant apology for her juvenile cheek. She dragged out an unusually small bale. "It's not much, 'cause we're not getting any more imports until we get some business. And Ali's using it on the fire as well, with these temperatures." She shivered. "Two knuts, then, Miss Sutch – and I don't know when there'll be any more. We'll have to import a nice live dragon to warm the place up, hey? He'd come with lots of packing..."

Tiggy closed the door on Benait's cheerful banter. _Thought they were smart, but all they really wanted to know... _Darkness...and fear...

~:~

The only way not to fear was to do. And there was so little to do. Plenty of time. Time to sweep the floor and wash the dishes - all three mugs, two chipped where Anticles had smashed them so often; three sets of cutlery; three bowls; four plates because Anticles hadn't smashed the one that had been Grandfather's yet; the knife, the chopping board. She couldn't scour the cauldron because that would take the Restorative Blacking paste off, so that had a quick pass with a cleaning charm. They had no more everyday dishes – mostly due to Anticles. Like newspaper, china only repairs so many hundred times. There were the few bits of Grandmother's wedding china left, arranged on the mantelpiece. The damaged bits, because they weren't worth selling. One platter – glaze perished. Three teacups – unbroken but all pattern washed off. Two bone china dinner plates – both chipped. And the old milk jug, that had lost its handle to become the charm-protected pot where they kept their wands out of Anticles' range. When you had washed all that lot, fear was still waiting.

She couldn't go and watch Rax working. It made him cross. Long ago, very long ago, before the People had come or they had met Dolohov on Diagon Alley, Tiggy could remember watching Father carve. A bigger workbench, a bright room, and golden, sweet-smelling curls of wood shavings– Rax wouldn't want to know. Do-you-remember-? was a game they never played. All that was worth remembering was long ago. And between them and long ago was a doorstep with Anticles on, and a smashed-up study, and the People...

That was simply how life was.

Books passed time, but they were so dull. 'Charms for the dinner party' out of _1001 Household Charms_ were pointless when you were waiting for the inevitable soup to cook; the _Young Witches of the World_ did not strive vainly against encroaching darkness – even the one with the werewolves in Australia.

Even rationed, every book they owned apart from one only staved off the dark for six crawling weeks into November. November long ago had been the time of Father's birthday. November had been the time they had been sent upstairs to the playroom when Somebody had come. It hadn't really bothered Anticles, two years old and chuckling happily over a set of blocks. Rax had curled up on the hearth rug, one hand holding a book open without turning the pages, the other absently returning the blocks Cles rolled at him. Tiggy had mounted the rocking-hippogriff, with his great wings of carved wooden feathers that wafted slowly up and down as you rocked. Creak, whoosh... creak, whoosh... a noise comforting but dull; a comfort and a dullness which could not shut out the dread of the Somebody downstairs.

~:~

November now meant Rax had work – a slightly smaller than usual order from the Christmas cracker makers. And the same dread lingered in the corners of the Post Office, where Tiggy must go, like it or not, to post the completed order. The rows of owls on their ranked perches were the same as ever, rows of glittering, jewel-bright eyes like the decorations that nobody was bothering to put up along Diagon Alley this year, but they stood out of darkness. Tiggy chose the queue for the post-office wizard, not Aldred's sister-in-law.

"What's the return address?"

He spoke so loudly. The line of anxious, middle-aged witches in the other queue all seemed to look round. She hadn't put it on. If the Christmas cracker makers didn't know a parcel from_ A. Sutch & __Co, Wizarding Chess Makers_, after all these years, they weren't going to know it for a return address.

The post-wizard leaned forward. "Return address, darling?" he repeated condescendingly. Now the whole place was listening. Tiggy seized the quill, wrote _'A. Sutch'_ on the package herself, and shoved it back across the counter.

"We can _spell_, you know..."

Tiggy thrust twelve precious Sickles across the counter, and walked out.

"And season's greetings to you too, _darling_..." followed loudly after her.

Season's greetings. Season of Goodwill. No goodwill dogged the shuffling footsteps of the street vendors on Diagon Alley; nor encroached upon the front page headlines in the windows of the Daily Prophet offices, with their reports of attacks and deaths and the Dark; nor lingered in the sludge-filled shadows of Knockturn Alley. Snow in the Alley never lasted: its sparkling whiteness trodden down to slushy darkness.

~:~

Snow did not last. Slush lingered, melted, froze in pools of dark ice by January as Tiggy picked her way along Knockturn to Bitter & Pitt the greengrocers. It was good it was January again. It was always a relief when Christmas was over. Christmas, like birthdays, was something they could not afford. And even more than birthdays, there were too many Christmases from Long Ago – the Last Christmas which had been very slightly odd, because Father had gone out on Christmas Eve instead of holding Rax or Tiggy's hand as they lit the candles on the tree with his wand and Mother had had to light them instead – the earlier one when Anticles had been brand new and they had got the rocking-hippogriff – and longer and longer Ago, back into when the darkness at Christmas had only been the pleasurable, delightfully mysterious darkness of opening one's stocking very, very early in the morning, only to fall asleep again with a silver Sickle clasped tightly in one hand...

She had a Sickle clasped equally tightly today – the entire allowance for their food shopping for a fortnight. Even with Rax having the time to perform increasing charms on the parsnips, while Tiggy took Cles into the front room and shut the door lest he be upset, they still had to buy food – and the money had to last. Rax had no more work. Nobody this new year seemed to want to buy a new chess set with five Galleons a doting bachelor uncle had sent them. There was no dependable order likely until the summer order from Scrivenshafts. But everything had gone up so.

It was – easier – anyway, to get a whole batch of shopping in a single trip. It cut down on expeditions in this cold weather. Not that there was any risk of Bitter & Pitt ever giving anything away in light-hearted gossip. Old Eleanor Pitt hated all customers in general, and those under the age of eighty in particular. She was almost stone deaf, and carried a large brass ear trumpet, but this was used for her to yell down at the customers, rather than for them to speak to her.

Tiggy squeezed herself and her basket through the door. Bitter & Pitt's was a large shop, but for some unknown reason they kept the big Ali-Baba basket for potatoes right behind the door. The other fruit and vegetables were ranged in baskets all round the walls, strings of mangy onions and shrivelled peppers and greenish-tinged garlic cast lumpy shadows from the window, and the centre of the shop was kept Clear. Perhaps for crowds of customers, thought you never met anybody else in there. Perhaps just to be Kept Clean. Eleanor Pitt sat in a big chair in the Back Corner of the shop, a cat to one side, a mop to the other. The slightest speck or blot or footprint on the floor, and that mop whizzed out under Eleanor's angry wand flick to obliterate the desecration – with no regard for customers' ankles.

The bell jangled dully as the door swung shut. Tiggy strove vainly to wipe the slush off her feet on the six inch square doormat that always seemed to have a water-repelling charm on it. The two pairs of eyes fixed on her from the corner of the shop.

"Good Morning." No answer. Politeness was generally futile in here. She lifted the lid on the potato basket. Three potatoes. Nothing else for it: Tiggy put the lid back, and approached The Corner. "Have you any more potatoes?"

Eleanor Pitt glared back, and lifted her ear trumpet. "Speak up!" she bellowed.

"Any More Potatoes?"

It was always the same answer, what ever you asked: "Nothing Wrong With Them!"

"Are There Any More?!" _Nothing like being discrete over one's shopping._

"Nothing Wrong With Them!"

Tiggy stepped back. "Parsnips, then!"

Eleanor raised her wand, and a small flurry of limp-topped, yellowish parsnips soared out of one of the baskets, and into the pan of the hanging scales next to her chair. "Eight Knuts!"

"And the three potatoes!"

The same wand flick, three clangs into the scales. "Eleven Knuts!"

"A cabbage!" The whole place would smell, but a cabbage made at least three meals without resort to magic.

Eleanor glared at her: "Pick It Yourself!"

The least miserable cabbage, from the very bottom of the basket. Eleanor seized it from Tiggy and banged it on top of everything else. "Fifteen Knuts!"

"And an onion?"

The scale pan promptly levitated and tipped its contents pell-mell into Tiggy's basket: "Nothing Wrong With Them!"

_As in, that was the last string in the window, and Eleanor Pitt liked them there._

She gave Tiggy another furious glare over the ear trumpet. "Fifteen Knuts!"

Tiggy handed over the now rather warm Sickle. And waited. And waited. And waited. "What About The Change?"

Eleanor Pitt rose in a fierce surge of shawls. "What about this? What about that?" she shouted, apparently under the impression she was muttering. "I know your sort, poking around and asking questions! Who what ? Who where? Looking for trouble, and coming back after dark! Protection and blood-purity – it's all young folk's trouble!" From somewhere under the shawls she produced the twelve knuts change, and slammed it with a final glare into Tiggy's hand. "You'll meet a sticky end like your fathers!"

They had a very silent soup for dinner. Remarks about Death Eaters weren't rare in Bitter & Pitt's – Eleanor Pitt had lost her son to the Dark side via an uncertain incident with _his_ son and _Imperius,_ and, like Ali Bashir, had known perfectly well whose granddaughter Tiggy was for the last fifteen years, and whose daughter that made her. Tiggy had been subjected to Eleanor's angry, almost-frightened muttering relating to the Dark side in there for years.

But- Asking questions? Looking for trouble and coming back after dark? Made Eleanor Pitt knowing who she was – into Darkness?

Eleanor Pitt did not gossip or sell 'baccy. After fifteen years Tiggy could have listed exactly everybody who shopped regularly with Aldred, half of those who just used it as an apothecaries, and a fair smattering of the one-off visitors. In the same timespan she had only ever met two customers in Bitter & Pitt's: one an elderly witch twelve years ago, and the other Madam Choppe from the Knockturn Alley butchers two years ago, who had been bartering meat of unknown origin for half a sack of carrots.

But the Dark side did not stop at gleaning gossip. And Eleanor Pitt did, very occasionally, deliver.

Had, once, delivered to the darkness at the foot of the sixty-nine stairs.

~:~

Even food shopping, then, could be too good. Even though going out or not made no difference to the problem with Eleanor Pitt. She knew – one isolated old witch with a shop on Knockturn Alley that no Ministry Auror or Enforcer would ever defend, even if they heard in time, knew something the Dark side had been prepared to stake a hundred Galleons on. And every day must go on regardless – carrying on playing when your king is in check.

Tiggy went out after a fortnight, down the sixty-nine stairs into darkness, and the bitter cold of frost and fear tearing at her chest with every step. To Burntwells for bread – being on Diagon Alley they had enough customers to never know who she was, even if they knew her by sight as the shabby witch who bought the day-old bread; and into Choppe & Sons the butchers. They didn't know her, because meat in there was permanently too expensive, even the "Selections" box they kept at the end of the counter, full of odd ends of meat of dubious hygiene and origin – but they sold onions. Eleven knuts for a whole string of only slightly questionable French onions – probably cheap due to smuggling in with a cargo of Abraxan horse meat.

It did have to be one of the '& sons' serving. He peered suspiciously at Tiggy. "And why would you be wanting a whole string, then...?"

Onion soup as a change from parsnip was one of the few things that could be counted as purely good. Cooking, washing the dishes, the daily struggle to extract Cles from behind the wing chair, brush the wood-shavings off him and make him go to sleep – all the time the fear and darkness was pressing. Eleanor Pitt knew. And so the Dark side could know. And so these shabby rooms under siege might be too good. Even lying awake at night, in its own way, was too good. Because there was the Dream.

The same Dream, over and over again. In the Dream, she had gone out. And from somewhere, someone – Somebody – was behind her... And in a slow, pointless game, like a pawn that flees vainly across the board from the opposing queen, she and the Somebody dodged through Knockturn Alley... in and out, in and out, through Choppe & Sons the butchers, and Benait's shop that was always empty no matter how much the dream-Tiggy hoped she might hide there, and Bitter and Pitt, and Borgin & Burke's, or sometimes Aldred's, or the post office, or even Whitburn & Thom's... the shops varied but the Dream never did – relentless pursuing Darkness that always came back with her up the sixty nine steps, and ended– always, always ended– ended in Rax dead upon the floor...

It was never Anticles. Tiggy figured that out when she would wake up, and lie in the probably too good darkness, staring at the pitch black wall. She could always remember the Dream – and it was never Anticles. Always Rax – always Rax. Sometimes she was not sure who had held the wand.

Lying awake was a relief after _that. _Even if your woken mind tossed over the same phrases... _seen a Basilisk … your sincere patron, Lucius Malfoy … active again … return address … be glad to see you … I know your sort … two men … meet a sticky end like your fathers! … _

Was that fathers plural or singular?Tiggy wished Eleanor had not said that, because there had been this haunting dread out and waiting quiet in long ago - in the week when life had become too good – in the week when Father had stopped going out. But he had not come upstairs to play with Tiggy or Rax or Cles. He had stayed in his study and the sound of pacing footsteps had drifted with the reek of burning parchment beneath the locked door.

You could not pace, here. There was no room, quite disregarding the risk of tripping over Cles in the dark, as he crawled across the floor searching for new mouse holes to poke wood shavings down. Keeping him supplied with shavings was becoming a problem in itself. There was no work – maybe naturally, maybe the Dark side had cut it off to starve them out. There was no way of telling. But there were no waste shavings, nor could they waste any of the unused wood in the big store chest. There was no way to get more. Wood came from many, many places – from Trewing & Duerrs, who were wizarding woodsmen, as offcuts from two different cabinet makers, and as small, smuggled-in parcels from the network of backstreet tradesmen who "knew people" abroad. But all of them – all of them you met by owl-appointment in the Dragon & Warlock.

Rax took the two pawns Tiggy had ruined in the summer and carved them into long, curling shavings for Anticles. They could not be repaired: a chess piece keeps its secrets and its power only as long as the heartwood is not hit. And then there was nothing else to do. Rax still sat at the workbench – just sitting, running his fingers occasionally along the lid of the store chest. They had a small fortune in wood in there – mostly in sizes only of use to chess makers. There was no need to say it; they both knew it. They could not sell it – and what good would money do them? The wood could only wait. Wait, and wait, in the darkness – for an owl... for an order... for the Dark side to find out where it was...

Waiting... waiting... Tiggy retreated back into the kitchen and curled up in the wing chair in the dark. _Lumos_ was one of the many spells her temperamental, half-inherited wand was not much good at – certainly not for a prolonged span of time. There was a little light from the meagre flames in the fireplace while the soup was slowly simmering – simmering because to cook it slowly over a very low heat used far less fuel, and to think about waiting for the soup was easier than to not think.

To not think about the Dark outside. To not think about Father. To not think that they had never known how he had died – the Daily Prophet had not troubled with details for another Death Eater perished – but that they did now know how he had lived... lived that last week besieged behind the door... and that there was every chance they would come to know in the same way how he had died … every chance that the Darkness would come back up the sixty-nine stairs, as it did in the Dream.

Why had it not? Why ever the Dark side wanted them, why had they _not_ found them? The house was not Unplottable – they knew that because the people from Hogwarts had come for each of them. It could, perhaps, be under a very weakened and far-spread _Fidelius _charm, with hundreds of Secret Keepers – yet not one of them had told the Dark side? Aldred – had talked. But she did not know where they lived. Eleanor Pitt did – the rest of Knockturn Alley must – it knew them as a Death Eater's children after all. Mother Hubbard – Mother Hubbard knew where half the rats and mice lived on Knockturn Alley, let alone the people. So why...?

_There was only one unspoken question more unanswerable. What if...?_

Perhaps that was how Eleanor Pitt lived, behind her ear trumpet and deafness – not thinking, just waiting, waiting. Perhaps the ever-whizzing mop had nothing particular against the customers' ankles – perhaps Keeping The Floor Clean was just something to do. Tiggy pondered this idea all through March and April – and finally took the brush and the bucket and the risk with Anticles' temper – and scrubbed the floor.

Perhaps the upheaval involved in getting at all of their two tiny floors – the moving of chairs and chests and Rax's blanket collection by the hearth - inspired Anticles to change his sitting spot. He did that sometimes. Behind the old wing chair had been his hiding place for years, But when Grandfather had been alive, it had been the drawer beneath the box bed. Grandfather had used to get very cross about 'the brat' sitting there. Tiggy could see now it had not been the blankets he had been worried about.

But it was fabric she was worried about now. Because Cles had decided, in his own mad way, to sit under the cloak hooks on the back of the front door. When he was just sitting, he sat outside the cloaks. When he wanted to hide, he pulled them in front of him. And when he wanted to stand up, he seized two large handfuls of cloak and pulled. He _had_ given up on wood shavings. The regular _Grrr...rrr...rrr...rrr _ of the marble rolling back and forth sounded all day long through the kitchen and workroom again. Tiggy just wasn't sure how many heaves the worn fabric of their only cloaks would take.

~:~

It happened the same as ever – as every outburst of Cles' had always done: a sudden bump that made Tiggy look round from the cauldron - and then the screams of mad anguish and the Crack! Crack! Crack!

Tiggy ducked – _it was always safest to duck_ – and then dived round the kitchen table to catch up the stiff, screaming figure. "Cles... Cles... there now, there now..." _Never scream - never shout for help_ – that only made Cles worse – Rax had come anyway – there was smoke – scorching smells – "There now, there now..." – and Anticles still screaming – _don't explode, don't explode_ – "Ssss... ssss... ssss..." – Rax saying "Hold still, he's burnt" – "Ssss... ssss... sss..." – and very slowly the screams fading down to the sobbing of a mad, elephant-eared three year old with both hands red and flame-scorched.

Only a minute or two – Anticles' magic only ever lasted a minute or two by the clock. If an hour in the instance.

Tiggy carried him into the better light of the front room, and held each hand out in turn for Rax's first aid charms. They were not badly burned, but even so – it wasn't often Anticles set fire to things instead of exploding them. Grandfather had used to be furious when Tiggy picked Cles up out of a burst of magic: "He'll blow you up, the brat!" But this was Cles – he couldn't help it. This was Cles who had answered the door – and somehow you got to be not afraid. A pent up flood of magic might break out at any moment – you could not be afraid of that each and every moment.

Right now, Cles was nothing but a crying baby – a heavy weight in her arms who would cry himself sick and then doze and sob and be feverish for a week or so, and need spoon feeding. That never varied; that wasn't a problem. Tiggy met Rax's eye. "What damage has he done this time?"

"The cloaks."

_The cloaks._

It shouldn't matter, when they were hardly going outside at all. But – but... well, but.

Rax's cloak had only the rent where the back hem had torn under Cles' grasp to drop him back on the floor. The matching damage on Tiggy's had vanished – obliterated in the two-foot diameter bite the magical flames had taken out of the fabric.

"He couldn't explode it," said Rax flatly.

Tiggy nodded. The door beneath was scorched. They had to open it, she had to go out onto the precarious top step, and shut the door into darkness, and try if it opened again. It was nice to know the silver plate seemed to have a stronger charm than Anticles could break. That was all right. The other problem now – was bread. Cles was asleep – when he woke up tomorrow he would be fretful and need her for days. And the late afternoons were when Burntwells tended to put out the previous day's bread.

"I'll go," said Rax suddenly, into Tiggy's silent consideration of the hole one of Benait's dragons would have been proud of.

"No you won't!" Tiggy snapped back. "Not after–"

"You can't go out without a cloak! Or in that!"

Tiggy glared at him. "Of course I can't! – but you can't go at all; you haven't even got a hat to pull down. We have one cloak left – I'll wear that."

"_We have one cloak left?_" Rax repeated sceptically. "Where _'left'?_"

"This," said Tiggy, flapping it. "Yours. I can wear it, it's only threadbare." Black hat, grey cloak – it was only one further step in mismatched shabbiness.

Rax looked at it for a long time. Then he fetched his wand down from the charm-protected pot. "You'll need the hem repaired."

The stitches were somewhat uneven, but nobody would be looking at the hem of what would be a floor-length cloak. "Don't trip," said Rax, with the slightest corner of a grin. Tiggy's first display of accidental magic had been 'borrowing' Mother's cloak for dressing up – and bouncing instead of falling down the playroom stairs.

Tiggy smiled back at him. "Keep an eye on Cles."

"He's asleep..." Rax protested.

"Then you'll just have to sit there and suffer from boredom," Tiggy retorted, and pulled the grey cloak about her. Rax came over and set the wrinkles from it being too wide evenly across her shoulders, as Father had used to do for smart new cloaks if they were going out with him. That was Long Ago – Tiggy shrugged it away, and pulled her hat down low. "I won't be long. Take care of Cles."

Rax opened the door. "You too, little sister. Take care."

~:~

They seemed to be suffering from boredom in Burntwells, too, for the serving witch was chattering on and on to a witch with red-gold hair in front of Tiggy about something or somewhere the serving witch knew her at or in or from. Something to do with a theatre. Tiggy didn't listen closely, but it didn't seem to be a very close acquaintance, for the young woman had folded her hands behind her back and was saying "yes... yes... yes... no... yes..." in a polite but disinterested tone. "Yes... no..." When the serving witch finally bent down to get the two sickles worth of sticky buns, the other witch whisked her head round and yawned and rolled her eyes and grinned at Tiggy, before whisking back to take her bag with a perfectly straight face.

A strange face... Tiggy paid four knuts for her loaf of yesterday's bread in silence, and walked out musing. It had been a face somehow like Benait's – not the milky white colouring, or the red-gold hair, but – the flashing of laughter – a face with neither fear nor malice. They were rare, these days... and completely non-existent among those who must slip past Mother Hubbard and live in the dark evening shadows of Knockturn Alley.

This bread buying had taken a long time, with that gossiping witch. Long, light May days did not penetrate between the close-packed, madly angled roof tops. Tiggy blinked as she reached the corner to let her eyes adjust to the coming darkness – and then hesitated. Nobody on Knockturn ever hesitated – it would be as much an indication that you were not minding your own business as looking round before opening your door – but two dark cloaked figures turned with rapid paces past the 'Dragon & Warlock' and into Knockturn – then another two – and another two.

They walked too fast to live here. _Ministry enforcers?_

Mother Hubbard was nowhere to be seen.

Tiggy heaved her mind back from musing, pushed her hat up just enough to keep watch and stepped softly into Knockturn. One house-witch with her basket was not important; in the shadows they would not see her. The first pair had reached a door and let a flash of light across the Alley, with the familiar sickly whine and tinkle of Borgin & Burke's door closing.

The door whined and tinkled again – and again. Tiggy hurried into their now clear wake – and an odd shaft of dazzling sun angled into street level, to catch her opposite Borgin and Burke's. She reached up and adjusted her hat slightly. A door slammed. Tiggy stepped forwards into the shadow.

"_Stupefy!"_

**~:~:~:~**

**A/N: _'En passant': a chess move in which a pawn that has apparently safely passed the attacking piece may still be captured..._**

_**I am reminded that I have not yet put any disclaimers to this fic. So, before certain Canon characters make an appearance, the usual: anything you recognise is borrowed, with all due respect and copyright infringement, from JKR; for the witch in Burntwells, see 'The Dream Shop'; while the two boys in Benait's shop belong to my beta-reader and his unfinished epic.**_

_**Next chapter, Tuesday: 'The Dark Queen.' **_

_**Three guesses and the first two don't count!**_


	8. The Dark Queen

The Dark Queen.

There was darkness.

Pressing black darkness, so completely dark it made no difference to have your eyes open or shut. Rather like the stairway. Sixty-nine steps down into darkness – and she had reached the bottom.

This was the Dark.

The Dark was cold. Cold air, cold wall, cold floor she sat on. Antigone drew her knees up and pulled Rax's threadbare cloak a little tighter, twisting the edges to wrap her hands in. A flicker of concern stirred in Tiggy. Rax had no cloak now. And no bread. And – Antigone choked her off. It was no time to worry – in the Dark. All these days she had been afraid, going down into the dark to go out. Afraid of what would happen. But it had happened. This was the Dark. And she was not afraid of the dark.

To sit in darkness – that was nothing new. It was certainly usual not to have much success with _'Lumos' – _for she still had her wand.

That had been a surprise, when Tiggy had first come round in the darkness, lying on this cold flagged floor. She had always expected the first thing the Dark side would do would be to take her wand away. But she still had it. She still had her hat, with the point now quite bent. She had still had the crumpled remains of her shopping basket over one arm, crushed where she had fallen on it. She had even still had what tasted like the now-at-least-several-days-old loaf of bread. It was as if Somebody had Stunned her, and then simply flung her into this – Darkness; and left her.

Perhaps that was meant to frighten. To cause panic. To suggest that nobody would be coming back.

But that was pointless: the Dark side would not have staked a hundred Galleons, or spent over a year hunting, to find Pericles Sutch's family, only to leave the Sutch they had caught to rot in the dark. Besides, nobody abandoning a pawn would leave a refilling- and refreshing-charmed pitcher of water in the corner. Somebody had put some thought into this cellar as a dungeon. Antigone wondered with slight amusement whether they had gone to the bother of placing anti-disapparition jinxes. A quite unnecessary effort – it had never been possible to learn to apparate, let alone afford the licence.

_They_ would come when _They_ were ready. Antigone shuffled to sit a little straighter against the wall. She would not worry – not about here, because it had happened; and not about – anywhere else – because you must mind your own business. And her own business was simple. The Dark side would accord at least the effort they had put in for Father, for his family. She must sit here – and wait. Wait for what _would _ happen – not the fear-inspiring 'might happen.' It was not hard to sit in the dark.

She tried to make an estimate of how long she had waited; how long there had been only Darkness – and voices. Because somewhere there were voices. They would come, and come and go for some hours, perhaps a day, and then there was quiet. Was that night? Or was that day, if these people belonged to the Dark? The People long ago had come and gone by night. She could not work it out. It all depended how long there had been between the shadows in the Alley and the Darkness here. And she had no idea.

Here and now, the voices were coming back. They were almost overhead, louder above the wall she was leaning on than on the other side of this dark cellar-like room. They were not trying to be quiet, or not overheard. The pawn in the Dark below was obviously of no concern to them.

The pawn was interested – Antigone listened.

They were talking about a funeral – about who should go to pay their last respects. It did not sound as if they had had very much respect for whoever the funeral was for.

"_You_ should go," the loudest, harshest voice mocked. "All the other students are staying to pay their respects; why not you? Since you _failed_ last time you saw him..."

A boy's sullen grumble replied with something Antigone did not catch. There was the distinct sound of a leg of furniture being kicked, and a harsh cackle of laughter rang out.

"Don't you _dare_ blame him!" A higher woman's voice broke in shrilly. "Don't you _dare– !"_

"Oh, it's all right," the cackling voice jeered. "All right with mummy and Severus to save your neck... you've got off lightly this time."

"At least _this_ mission overall was a success," the boy's voice snapped. "Didn't smash anything."

Whatever _that_ meant, the cackling, mocking laughter stopped. There was a silence of deadly intensity.

When the voice spoke again, it was a low snarl: "_Never Say That_ _Again. _The Dark Lord trusts _me,_ not you little jumped-up _brat_..."

The boy lapsed back to a mumble Antigone could not hear. The cackle rang out again: "Your precious father...! Let me show you something... Wormtail!"

Shuffling footsteps and the rattle-rattle of a fire being stirred up followed, masking the sharp commands the harsh voice seemed to be giving, and the murmur of the shriller woman's voice. Another kick to the furniture sounded through the ceiling, and the shuffling footsteps went back overhead.

Another silence. This time – waiting.

Somewhere, a door was opened and shut. Somewhere, footsteps were coming uncertainly down stairs. And a volley of blows landed on the door of the cellar.

"Get back!" a wheezy voice commanded. "Lower your wand! I'm coming in!"

Antigone did not stir. _Come in, then._ She could hardly hinder it.

The door flew open. Light.

And the little man.

The little, stooping, shuffling man from Anticles' birthday, with his pointy, mousy face. Antigone rose sharply. There was no recognition in those bulging, watery eyes, but _she_ knew _him_. By the silver hand, she knew he was Wormtail the spy. But also, of all the People who had come, she knew Father had not bowed _him_ in.

"What is the meaning of _this_?" Her voice sounded strangely deep – it was a moment before she realised she had quoted Father, the day he had caught Rax and Tiggy building castles with the books in his study. There was no time for Tiggy's Long Ago now – Antigone forced it away and took a sharp step forwards. "Well?"

The silver hand flew up, wand pointed at her. "Give – give me your wand," he ordered wheezily, shuffling back a pace.

Antigone drew Mother's wand and tossed it at him. What damage did they think a half-educated witch with a half-inherited wand could _do...?_

He stepped to one side of the doorway, and gestured out of the door with both wands: "C-come on!"

She looked at him for a moment, and very deliberately set her hat straight, and her cloak folds neatly, before moving.

Straight up from the door were steep stairs. Wormtail panted up in front of her. Into a dark passageway, and he suddenly flung out the silvery hand to stop her. The crack of light from a door further along had burst into a flood, around a white-blonde boy backing out of the room. "I'm not _interested..._" he sneered, slightly too quickly to sound true. "Call me when it's dinner, Mother. I'll be busy."

"The Dark Lord doesn't like petty moods," the harsh voice called back, as the boy turned sharply on his heel and stomped off up the narrow service staircase that the passageway ended in.

"On!" Wormtail squeaked, as if the pause had been Antigone's fault. They stepped forwards into the doorway.

It had been a grand drawing room – a crystal chandelier hung above a fine oriental carpet Benait would have died for. Exquisitely upholstered French chairs stood around the walls, as if much of the furniture had been pushed back to make room for something. By the huge marble fireplace, with a heavy, scroll-framed mirror over it, two chairs were still in place, a claw-footed side table bearing some half-worked embroidery beside one. Two witches stood before the blazing fire. One, slight and pale, exquisitely dressed in a manner that perfectly echoed the refined taste of the room. The other: dark-browed, dark haired, heavy lidded –

– the insolent, powerful face of Bellatrix Lestrange looked up as she had done from the front page of the Daily Prophet.

In fifteen years the Dark Queen had barely changed.

~:~

"Finally," she spat, as Wormtail stepped past Antigone, and bowed before the two women. "Scuttle faster next time, rat." A flick of her hand sent him cringing to one side, and Bellatrix turned back to her companion. "As _dear_ Draco did not like to stay and hear, your precious husband has failed on more than one of his missions."

The other witch flushed. "Don't you _dare_ insult Lucius," she hissed back in a shaking voice. "Don't you– you– The Dark Lord has– has _freed_ him, and– and has sent for him tonight," she added proudly, tossing back her hair and glancing for one moment into the heavy gaze. "Sent for him _especially."_

"Cissy...!" There was no mirth in the scornful laughter. "This _especial _summons is only to tell him the Dark Lord will be moving his headquarters from Riddle House to here the day of the funeral, when all the Aurors will be busy elsewhere. All the Death Eaters know _that..." _Bellatrix shook her left wrist casually, and watched the effects of her words with apparent amusement.

'Cissy' went, if possible, even paler; her mouth crept open as if in slow shock or fear. _"Here..."_ she whispered, _"here...?"_

The amusement vanished in a swoop of dark brows. "It is an Honour! An honour the Malfoys barely deserve, given their past record, but still an honour!" Cissy stiffened in protest, but the fanatical zeal swept on, disregarding. "To have _Him, _ the Dark Lord, in our family's house! – it is the Highest Honour for us! Don't _cry,_ Cissy – try and remember you're a Black."

"This," choked Cissy, in a voice cold yet trembling, as if she fought to suppress tears, "is the house of the _Malfoys,_ Bella. It is _Lucius's_ house. The honour is for _him. _The Blacks' house is– is– " she trailed off more weakly, as Bellatrix's face twisted into a sneer, "is– Grimmauld Place."

Mockery was gone – the deadly snarl filled the dark face. "Currently besmirched by that blood traitor's gang and – _the boy..." _ She seemed to shake off the thought. "Which is why the Dark Lord will be pleased with one traitor less on the loose. Lucius had failed – I have succeeded. Rowle can confirm it," she added as Cissy made another tremor of protest. "Rowle?"

An occupant of the room Antigone had not noticed before rose from a chair in the shadows to the side of the fire. He lumbered forwards – the huge, blonde Death Eater from the Wanted posters _– the lumbering bishop who had come out of Aldred's in the mist._ He grunted.

"Rowle," Bellatrix proceeded scornfully, "witnessed Lucius's first failure in the Dragon & Warlock, failed in his own intrigues with the apothecary, and saw My success the other night–"

"You weren't even supposed to go!" the goaded wife broke in. "You were under express orders not to!"

The fanatic shrugged. "The Dark Lord desires zeal, not _tears_, Cissy. He would not have complained if I had gone – the mission might have worked out slightly more satisfactorily if I _had..._" she added as an extra stab. "But He will not complain at what I _did_ achieve. _I _saved that mission – for there was a _spy _outside Borgin and Burke's..."

The words hung in silence. Wormtail shuffled forwards from behind Antigone, his mousy eyes bulging with eagerness. "A – a _spy_, madam?"

"Yes!" Bellatrix glared down at Cissy in triumph: "_I_ was not blinded in the rush to meet your son's panicky message! _I_ saw! _I_ took them! And _I-! I-! I...!_" – before that pent-up force even Thorfin Rowle seemed to shrink – "_I _have captured the Traitor Sutch's son!"

_~:~ _

_Son? Son?_

There are moments when everything becomes blindingly clear – even in Darkness. Antigone reached up, pulled hairpin and hat pin, and stepped forwards: firm; bare-headed; in Rax's cloak; into the bright ring of firelight.

"Daughter."

~:~

_Like with the 'Young Witch' who had faced the ring of werewolves in Australia, it would have been comic – had it not been so deadly._

A cry and echo from Cissy and Wormtail – blank shock across the Dark Queen's face – and an bellow from Rowle. A wand flashed, and the angry lunge of the huge Death Eater was blocked as if by an invisible wall. His mouth worked silently behind it.

There was an eternity of silence, apart from the crackle of the fire. ThenBellatrix Lestrange stepped slowly, dangerously forwards. "_So... _And so you _are–"_ At first hand, fourteen years in Azkaban had made the voice harsher, a slow growl like a wild cat about to spring.

"Pericles Sutch's daughter."

"I knew _THAT!" _The harsh voice cracked into a scream. "Your name!"

It was like Anticles in one of his fits – the tense, screaming figure you could feel the magic about to break destructively out of. You could not fear it when you lived with it. _ This was the same... _She inclined her head politely. "Antigone Sutch, madam."

Bellatrix's wand hand paused in its rise. " 'A. Sutch' ?" A softer, deadlier growl. She took one step to the right.

"Yes, madam."

"Wizarding Chess Makers?" One square to the left.

"Yes, madam."

One square to the right. "Still in business?"

"Yes, madam."

"Know anything of _ivory...?"_

Antigone looked up with a stab of sullen annoyance. Did they think she was stupid? "The money never came," she said shortly.

Two cries of rage this time – Bellatrix and a weaker echo from Cissy. "How dare you! How dare you lie to me!" The wand pointed at her face. "You never replied!"

Antigone looked down, shrugged. They would not want to kill her, just yet. The wand did not need fearing. "Don't usually bother with customers who don't send the money for what they order."

Cissy's cry and Rowle's jeering guffaw were drowned in an inhuman shriek. "We're not here to play games with! Where's Your Brother?!"

Bellatrix lunged forwards: her strong fingers seized Antigone's chin and forced it up. "Where! Where!" she screamed madly, jerking Antigone to and fro so sharply the room appeared blurred. "Where! Where! Tell me, spy! Traitor's brat! Where's Your Brother?!"

A last, vicious shake, and she flung Antigone back. There was a deadly silence.

"Where?!"

_Where __**was**__ her brother? _

The wand hand was rising

_Have it your own way, then. _

Antigone lifted her eyes from the hem of Bellatrix's robes. She would not look at Rowle, or Wormtail, or the cringing Cissy. The Dark Queen could move anywhere on the board – but this one had been held in Azkaban by then. She lifted the memory that blocked Long Ago from every day since and looked at Bellatrix – looked at Bellatrix through the screaming remains of Anticles that had been left on the doorstep:

"I think one of your comrades can account for my brother."

"_WHAT?!"_

She could feel the bewilderment in the circle around her. Rowle ceased the struggle against the invisible charm Bellatrix had flung around him; there was a squeak from 'Cissy'; Wormtail panted nervously to one side. They did not matter – only the Dark Queen.

The confidence was gone from Bellatrix's eyes, even as they bored into Antigone. "Then- then-" she hissed. "Then..."

One word, one scream of Mother's; one none of them had been meant to hear, but had carried like Bellatrix's own voice right up to the top floor playroom. "Dead!" _You could join the two..._

Bellatrix pounced. _"TWO!_ _TWO!_" A curse like a whip-lash hit Antigone and sent her staggering sideways, the connection between pawn and queen broken. "Two! You had two brothers! Two sons of a traitor! Where?! Liar! Where?!"

A hex blow with each scream – _she would not fall_ – Rowle was shouting about having been in the Dragon and Warlock – _she would not fling an arm up as futile shield_ – Narcissa was squealing – _she would __**not**__ fall_ – Bellatrix's wand and voice rose – and were suddenly still.

"I won't give you _pain..." _she hissed, "just _yet..._. You look like that traitor – but he was a willing traitor then – or his brats are stronger. Tell me where that other brat is... and you might both live..._ or I will rip it out of you..." _Her voice rose back to a shriek: "Tell Me!"

The wand jerked – and suddenly there was – not pain – but Rax:_ Rax sitting at his workbench, Rax looking down at the Prophet; Rax cross about the Quibbler; Rax saying 'they looked like they'd seen a Basilisk'; Rax holding the Malfoy's owl; Rax glaring because she was watching him carve; Rax in the Dream upon the floor_ – and a scream that wasn't Antigone's.

There was only here – with Rowle and Cissy and Wormtail – and the Dark Queen's mad eyes inches from her own. "What was that?" she spat. "Tell me, brat! Don't try and lie – I saw it! Traitor's brat!"

A blow across her face, this time that burned. _They would kill her – but they would __**not**__ have Rax. _

Antigone flung up her head and met Bellatrix's gaze with every ounce of pride and dignity possible – she was, as all of Knockturn Alley had said, a Death Eater's daughter – and the Darkness had her.

"I am not a traitor. My brother would not join you" – The Dream flickered between her and Bellatrix – "That is why he is dead by my hand."

A shriek of mad, mirthless laughter – a blow into Darkness – and very slowly there was pain, and the flickering firelight on the ceiling – and the pawn lay on the floor.

"You Little Fool... Little murdering fool." Bellatrix stood above her head, features grotesquely distorted from this angle. "Did you think that would ever make us _trust_ a Sutch...?"

**~:~:~**

_**A/N: The most obvious chapter title in history, I grant you!**_

_**Next chapter: 'The game should end in checkmate.'**_

_**Until Friday, then, I leave you to Bellatrix's tender mercies...!**_


	9. The game should end with checkmate

The game should end in checkmate

There was nothing.

Grey walls. Grey streets. Cold. Hard. Unknown.

It was a place, and in that place the pawn – existed. Nothing more.

_~:~  
_

_They_ had it. The harsh voice that spoke in command had the hand and the wand and the whole outer wood of the pawn that had been Antigone Sutch.

In the nothing – in the greyness – the pawn existed.

~:~

The voice commanded and the pawn obeyed. Because _They_ had missed the heartwood. _Don't carve too deeply._

Between _Them_ and the truth lay a lie. And in the weakness of the outer wood _They_ did not see it. While Antigone obeyed, while Tiggy did not move, _They _would not have the boys.

Why should anyone suspect a pawn who just existed? A pawn who could do only what the harsh voice commanded?

~:~

Grey walls. Grey days. And then the Dark, and the harsh voice, and the floating blackness that moved and did and knew nothing. Until another grey dawn, and grey day, before the Dark again...

~:~

Was there time in this grey place? Were there seasons? Was there anything more than the grey and the Dark, and the grey and the Dark, on and on?

~:~

The pawn existed. Greyer and greyer, Darker and Darker. Sometimes a mad kaleidoscope would pass across the greyness of its mind: of screams and wild broomstick rides and flashes of red and green and always, always, like the Dream, the Darkness...

Everything that was good was gone – gone further than Long Ago – gone into the Dark. The Darkness could not take away two lies.

The lies were there – because the voice told them – told them as the basis of where to go and what to do in the Darkness – before the grey came back again.

~:~

There was no time – there was nothing. Only the grey and the Dark, on and on.

~:~

There was more grey than Dark, these days, and the pawn waited. Grey days and cold grey nights. And finally, the voice.

The usual voice: "Go to Hogwarts."

The pawn rose, drew her wand to apparate.

And a different voice, high and cold and hissing, broke in:

"_And we need Men... You have lied... Bring your brother."_

Tiggy's brother.

Tiggy was stronger than Antigone.

It was Tiggy who thrust the wand back into her robes.

It was Tiggy's voice that screamed.

"_NO!"_

_**~:~:~**  
_

_**A/N: So... is it checkmate?**_

_**As usual, next Tuesday: 'The Queened Pawn'.  
**_


	10. The queened pawn

The Queened Pawn

The laburnum trees were in flower. All along the road. Little swinging chains of golden flowers, set wafting in the breeze that seemed to be walking with Tiggy along this quiet, country lane. They were pretty. Such a change from the grim, grey streets. There had not been flowers for so long. She stopped to look at them. How strange to be able to stop. And then start again.

She kept walking. She kept looking at the laburnum trees, and the green woods behind them, and the rest of this peaceful landscape. And stopped again, and started. How queer.

She had to keep going. But she was _not _going to hurry. She had... here Tiggy had to pause, and consult Antigone as to what they were doing. Of course: she had to go to Hogwarts. She had to go to Hogwarts, Tiggy repeated out loud to the laburnum trees. And she had to see Professor Dumbledore, and tell him what she had done. She kept walking. Vaguely she recalled that somebody had once said that Professor Dumbledore was dead. But that was just one of their lies.

How strange that she should be able to see they were lies. In fact, how queer that they had given her her mind back. But, of course: this was the last joke. The last revenge on the man who had betrayed them – to make his daughter go and betray herself. And to leave her disposal to the Ministry. Her death was not worth tearing their souls apart for. She was not worth even the effort they had put in to kill those muggles.

Antigone weepily suggested it was her hand that had held the wand that killed those muggles.

Tiggy nodded. Somewhere in the strange past with the lies, she had held that wand. Professor Dumbledore liked muggles. That was what Grandfather had used to say. He would not like her. But she was still going. She wished Antigone would stop crying. She had cried all night. All through this long walk, that Tiggy could not explain. She had to go to Hogwarts. But she wouldn't apparate. Tiggy wasn't sure why, just that she _wouldn't_ apparate. She wanted to walk. It was a long way. Especially with Antigone crying when Tiggy didn't feel like crying.

She had been two people. Tiggy was sure of that. And now they were both back in her head. She was going to Hogwarts. That was the bit Antigone said. And she had to see Professor Dumbledore and tell him what she had done. That was the bit Tiggy said. And then it would be over. They both knew that.

~:~

There was no sign of the castle yet, but she was on the right road. Presumably because _They_ were still directing her. Even though she could think again. At first, last night, she had gone blindly – only knowing that she would _not _apparate – walking one step after another in the Darkness, a darkness pulling her onwards. Walking had been_– hard_ – very, very hard, last night, when the two voices had spoken. Only putting one leaden foot in front of the other had dimmed the sound of that command – the pull of the destination _They_ had put in her mind, and the tugging image of Rax - 'somewhere.' Step, step, step – like the climbing the stairs out of the darkness. Only one thought that Tiggy clung to – No! No! No! – while all the time Antigone had cried.

It had been hard; it had seemed almost impossibly hard. And then, somewhere, sometime, at the very darkest point of the night, had come Blindness so terrible it had made her retch, a pull of Blindness that had almost made her apparate. She had only not gone by clinging to a fence – or post or gate – Tiggy was not quite sure what the hard object had been, only that it had been solid, un-magic, un-apparating – a cold, hard, solid Thing that had been there in the blind Darkness. She had clung on, and on – a 'clinging to' that had been the exact opposite of the 'going to' the Darkness tried to pull her into – and very strangely a single phrase had come to join the single thought of 'No!' that protested against the Darkness: _the darkest hour is just before dawn._

The darkest hour is just before dawn; the darkest hour is just before dawn – Tiggy had been muttering it to herself for some time, holding the hard Thing, before she had remembered it came from the _'Young Witch' _with the werewolves in Australia. And it was true, for this was Darkness unimaginable... the previous hardness in walking had been 'too good' – this was a hardness that made Antigone cry out at every step, that strained every fibre to just keep going – because she could, and she would, push the Darkness a little further away, with the 'no!' and the 'dawn'...

On, on! _No! No! _And then – and then she, Tiggy, must have failed – she must have slipped back into a pawn – because the Darkness and the hardness had – faltered – and dimmed, fainter and fainter – and then she had laughed, laughed a mad, wild, exhilarated laugh not her own, and – the Darkness had gone. Except that could not be true. The pawn must have given in, gone back into the simple, unknowing darkness where there had been no struggle. That was when it had become possible to stop, and start again. She had stopped. And watched the sunrise. And gradually, she had become aware of Antigone's insistence that she must go to Hogwarts, and Tiggy's insistence of why she must go to Hogwarts, and – that she did not know how to get there.

The Darkness had never left her stranded before. The pawn had always just gone. Tiggy had stared at the sunrise, and the green land, and the blue sky for what seemed like forever, before she had dredged out a memory - the single name of a muggle village, from the only tale Father had ever told about Grandfather, that he had only ever told one Christmas. Until Father had died, they had known nothing about Grandfather except that tale, of how he, with another boy, had got out of school at a Hogsmeade weekend and adventured over moor and mountain to look at the nearest muggle village.

And so she had walked there. And when the 'No Through Road – Unsuitable for Motor Vehicles' sign at the crossroads in the middle of the village had changed to 'Hogsmeade: 10 miles' as she looked at it, she had followed. Father's tale had been quite right – moor and mountain, until you came upon a little back lane at the foot of cottage gardens. The little back lane and the cottage gardens had been completely deserted – as most places had been all night. And all this time of Darkness. Only the nights when you did not know what you were doing was there anybody else – the cloaked and hooded People out of Long Ago.

There was no sign of _Them_ in Hogsmeade. Just a sign: 'To Hogwarts School and Station.' And now she was walking along that lane, with the quiet and the wind and the trees in flower.

The walking was easier now.

Only with the dawn and the direction had she been able to sort it out. What was happening. That she must go to Hogwarts. That it must be to tell them what she had done. That this was the last joke. The ability to stop had become easier and easier. Or perhaps it was that with the light, there were more things to stop and look at. And things to remember. Last joke or not, it was nice to remember. The yellow laburnum flowers made her remember the pots of honking daffodils that used to be put out along Diagon Alley in the spring. They had happened every year – it was stranger that she should have remembered Father's tale about the muggle village. He had never told it again – perhaps it was too close to whatever had been Long Ago for Pericles. Perhaps it had reminded him of before he had not minded his own business and had joined the Dark.

Whether or not he had minded his own business, Tiggy reflected as Antigone kept crying, Father had been stronger. The Dark Queen had been wrong _– how strange to see that she had been wrong. _ But she had been: Father had betrayed the Dark of his own choice; Tiggy was doing it as part of _Their_ revenge. Strange, because her voice as Tiggy had not at any point in this last year told her what _They_ said she must do. Only Antigone. But it was as Tiggy she was quite certain she must tell Professor Dumbledore about those muggles. But that must simply be because this was the last joke.

It did not matter. It would soon be over. The Darkness had just lasted a little longer than she had expected in that dark cellar beneath the Dark Queen. Tiggy nodded. She, a pawn, was not worth the Dark Queen's effort. A pawn in a chess game is worth much less than a piece.

~:~

She must be nearly there. The lane had widened as it started to slope upwards, widened out to broad grass running up to huge walls, tall gateposts topped with giant winged boars, and– the first sign of _Them. _

The great wrought iron gates were blown wide open.

So _They _had been here. Tiggy stepped softly through the gateway. It was only a very little further now, then. Only a very little longer before it would be over. There was still time to walk slowly and look.

The grass here was completely trampled, as if hundreds of people had charged over it. She kept walking. The drive topped a swelling rise, and the castle was before her. The castle... Tiggy stopped, and stared. Grandfather had said that any muggles who looked at Hogwarts only saw a crumbling ruin – but this castle _was_ crumbling. Two of the towers were torn off; great gaping holes stared blindly from the walls; you could probably count the windows that were unbroken.

_She had to go to Hogwarts_, Antigone repeated. Ruin or not, this was Hogwarts.

She went on. _They_ had been here. That was all. The lawns were torn with hex gashes and craters, broken glass and masonry littered the ground at the foot of the castle walls. There were no bodies – that was strange. Everywhere else she had been in the Darkness, there had been bodies.

Tiggy stopped at the foot of the marble steps. Not many steps – she was just tired. Perhaps it would be easier when it was over.

One... two... three... four... Each step was cracked and chipped with curses. Again, the print of hundreds of feet, this time with hoof prints. Tiggy was too tired to wonder.

Over the last step –

– and the pawn had gone to Hogwarts.

~:~

What should she do now? There were voices coming from another huge doorway across this vast, echoing hall – perhaps they would know where Dumbledore was. She went slowly towards the swelling hubbub. People – hundreds of people filled the biggest room Tiggy had ever seen – bigger than the drawing room of the Malfoys, or any room in their old house Long Ago, or – anywhere. You could practically have put Diagon Alley in it. There were long tables and benches as if it was a dining room, but the people weren't eating – smiling or crying or both, they _Talked_: exclaiming, shouting, laughing, slow consoling, here and there what seemed to be earnest explanation – they all looked like that witch who had been ahead of her at Burntwells... neither fear nor malice... just, in sorrow or laughter, relief.

_Why was she here? _Tiggy stood and stared. _All these people – why were they all here? _It did not look like the usual situations the harsh voice sent her to. They talked – they laughed – there were people pushing through the crowds up and down between the tables, and loud exclamations would break out where two of them met. A close knot of figures near the door broke up, and the black, bald-headed wizard at the centre of it turned – and saw Tiggy.

Perhaps that was what Rax had meant when he said 'saw a Basilisk' – except it looked far more like Benait realising it was 'Miss Sutch' – a flash of surprise and – recognition?

"_A-"_ The man took one quick stride towards her, and then slowed, doubt replacing the whatever it was in his look. He stopped in front of her with an expression of curiosity: "Can I help you? Are you looking for someone?"

Tiggy dragged her gaze out of this strange hall of happiness, and looked up at him. "Dumbledore. I need to see Dumbledore."

Again that queer gaze, but he nodded politely. "I'll fetch him. Aberforth!"

Calling, he went towards a group across the hall. Tiggy's eyes drifted back to the sunshine that streamed through the broken windows. She would tell Dumbledore – and it would all be over. The last joke – to wait at the door of this sunlit hall as she had waited in that dark cellar.

This time there was only Light – and voices.

Voices, voices. They were getting further and further away. Tiggy stared round at the huge Entrance Hall, the totally battered front doors, the cracked and stained floor. Whatever was going on now, it looked as if something had certainly happened here last night.

"She's here." The man was back, beside a tall old man with straggling dirty white beard and bright blue eyes. He looked like Grandfather's description.

"Are you Dumbledore?"

_End games involve great deliberation, very careful moves – that must be why they stared at her so..._

The old man frowned. "In a manner of speaking, I am..."

His voice was rough and gruff, but not harsh or mocking. She could not find any of Antigone's dignity, but she tried to be polite: "Professor Dumbledore?"

They started – and they stared. The bushy white eyebrows above the bright blue eyes shot upwards.

"If you was wanting Albus, Missy, you're a year too late. He's dead."

_~:~_

_Dead...? Dead...?_

"But that was one of their lies," Tiggy protested faintly.

There was a long pause – the silence of a three piece end game. "An' who might _They_ be?" asked the not-Dumbledore slowly.

_The edges of the world were receding into fuzzy whiteness, but They still stared clearly through it – the Face from the Daily Prophet window on Diagon Alley – _

"Bellatrix Lestrange..."

_His voice in the fog had got even slower, even more incredulously patient. He could have been speaking to Anticles: _

"Have you been thinking clearly lately, Missy...?"

_Two faces were all that were left in the fog – The Face; and somehow through it, the not-Dumbledore's face..._ Tiggy peered to keep them in focus. "Since last night... They gave me my mind back..."

_Only those piercing blue eyes..._ "You do know You-Know-Who an' the Lestrange woman are dead, then, Missy?"

_Dead...? Dead...? _The whiteness had gone with the word – but that could not be true... no more than the Darkness that had vanished with the sunrise. "It can't be..."

"Why not?" said the black wizard crisply, a faint tinge of suspicion in his voice.

Tiggy looked at him blankly, looked at the not-Dumbledore and the people beyond them and the sunshine, down at herself in this ancient cloak of Grandfather's, and back at the two men.

_She was a Sutch – wasn't it obvious? _"That would be 'too good.'"

This end-game did not make sense. The not-Dumbledore roared with laughter – "Go an' tell Potter that one!" – the black wizard was saying that this was probably a case for an Auror – he did not look very much like the angry men in their red Auror robes who had come for Father – and when she said "I did what _They _told me" he only asked:

"Did you want to?"

_Want? She'd been a pawn... _"I couldn't stop – I couldn't not."

"Until when? Five o'clock this morning?"

_Five o'clock – was that the sunrise? _"Last night," said Tiggy firmly. "They gave me my mind back last _night."_

Now he was looking puzzled again – the same flicker of uncertain recognition in his gaze despite the calm, steady voice: "Then what happened?"

_The two voices, and the walk, and the Darkest hour just before dawn, and the sunrise, and the village, and the stopping and starting again... _

"_Imperius_ case, Kingsley," the not-Dumbledore grunted when she was done.

Kingsley nodded. "Madam–"

Tiggy shook her head. 'Madam' was a title for other – People, out of Long Ago. "I'm Tiggy – Tiggy Sutch."

And the recognition in his eyes had grown into a smile. "Miss Sutch, forgive me, but – does your brother look like you?"

**~:~:~**

_**A/N: Ah? But which brother...?!**_

_**Chapter 11 ... **_'_**Where the king was castled' …on Friday ...  
**_

_**~:~:~**_


	11. Where the king was castled

Where the king was castled 

_Does – your – brother – look – like – you...?_

The words played slowly in Tiggy's mind. _Does – your – brother – look – like – you...?_ _Yes, one of them – _ _did..._

"Yes! Rax!" She clasped suddenly at Kingsley's arm. "Yes! Yes! You've seen him? You know where he is? Is he all right?"

The smile on the Auror's face faded slightly. "He's – alive."

_Alive...? Alive...?_

A cold finger of Darkness seemed to fall across this sunlit castle – as if the celebrations of others were too good for a Sutch after all. _What did only 'alive' mean...?_

Kingsley looked at her with concern. "He– your...your brother has been – very badly cursed," he said with slow reluctance.

_The Dream – The Dream – what had she done? Had her hand that held the wand failed to kill – only to exact the same pointless vengeance as They had wreaked on Cles?_

Tiggy straightened. "I must see him. I must."

There was no sunshine now – only darkness. To see him – to see him... only that idea beat through the cold, grey, mocking heaviness as 'No!' had beaten through the Darkness last night. But it hadn't worked – for the Dark Queen still mocked the pawn, though dead... The pawn had thought it was the last joke, the last revenge – but it was not on Father – the Darkness had set revenge too for the pawn who had cheated them... 'You have lied,' the hissing voice had said – how had _They_ known unless _They_ had found him... to make her... and to make her discover...

_She must see Rax – she must, she must... _Somewhere in the greyness the not-Dumbledore was objecting that she couldn't "go rushing off in your state, Missy" – _she must see him – _ a balding, red-headed man was talking to Kingsley in a low, urgent tone –_ she must see him – _ Kingsley was telling him to gather all the Ministry workers and he'd join them in about twenty minutes – _she must see him – _ the not-Dumbledore was offering to take her – _she must see him – _Kingsley was smiling, and saying he'd like to tell somebody it was 'all over' himself – and through it all the Darkness swirled like the mist up Diagon, and the Dark Queen mocked... Darkness... darkness – _what had she done? _

_What did an Auror describe as very badly cursed? How could it be 'all over' if Rax- if Rax had- been cursed...?_

It was a very long way to the gates before Kingsley said they could apparate.

~:~

Pressing crush of Apparition – very different with another hand guiding instead of the forcing call of the harsh voice – and then for a moment it seemed they had left the Darkness behind. The place was green, more sunshine. Tiggy blinked frantically in the bright light. It was- it was a field, a footpath through a big, open field with low cereal grasses rippling in waves beneath a gentle wind. Hedges and trees and fields to the left, a steep hill up to blue sky and wind-bent trees to the right. She stared around.

"It is a bit of a change from Hogwarts," Kingsley remarked, pointing along the footpath. "Not much further to see your brother now, Miss Sutch."

The cold, grey dread came back.

_She must see him... but what might she have done...? The last joke might be knowledge, not oblivion..._

"I'm sorry about the walk," Kingsley's voice sounded through the greyness, "but as Hidcote's a muggle village, you can't apparate into the lane, and since their son was killed, the Faringdons have some fairly comprehensive anti-disapparition wards-"

"_Faringdon?" _

"Yes." Kingsley stopped as Tiggy had done. "Do you know them?"

_Faringdon... _

_Faringdon was a name from Long Ago. But not a face, not one of the People who belonged to the Darkness. Faringdon – was the name of the boy who had gone to the muggle village with Grandfather... Which meant... what? _

Tiggy realised she was staring. "Grandfather did," she said faintly.

They went on in silence.

_It made sense, then. That this __**was**__ the last joke – even with the Dark Queen dead. That was why Tiggy had remembered the tale of Grandfather and the boy called Faringdon. They had put Rax there, and made it that she would go there... that this time, the revenge on the Sutches would hit home..._

Along the path, through a narrow gate into a grass-verged country lane, with a thick hedge on one side and a row of thatched, golden-Cotswold-stone cottages on the other. Kingsley drew his wand at the first white-painted front gate.

"It is I, Kingsley Shacklebolt," he called. "And it's all over: Voldemort" - he said the word with a queer expression of triumph – "is dead!"

Someone must have been watching the front gate, for it popped open at the same time as the cottage front door, and a little old witch rushed out. She was even shorter than Tiggy, with grey hair and as many wrinkles as Aldred, and a certain neatness and enunciation that marked her as French. The same eruption of talking as at Hogwarts – a mysterious jumble of 'the taboo!' and 'it's over!' – Potter and Horcruxes and Voldemort and wands and giants and Phoenixes and the names of many, many people who had apparently fought or died or survived – and again and again that it was all over.

_It was all over – that was true._

They talked, and Tiggy leaned dully on the hard stone wall of the porch, that could not stave off the Darkness like the un-apparating Thing last night – the swirling, mocking Darkness of 'very badly cursed...' She had thought she must go to Hogwarts, but the last joke was here. _It was all over._

"...all over! Anyway," Kingsley's voice broke through, "this young lady's here to see her brother – Antigone Sutch, Marie-Elise Faringdon – and I'll have to go now, Marie-Elise." He smiled. "Your son's poor trainee auror protégée has to go to the Ministry and be confirmed as temporary Minister for Magic."

He shook off the old witch's startled cluckings of almost maternal pride – nodded politely to Tiggy – and vanished in three strides to the gate and a cloak-swirl of apparition.

"_Mon Dieu..." _Marie-Elise shook her head. "Kingsley – _Minister._" She turned to Tiggy. "He was our Philippe's first trainee, once Philippe had qualified himself, and they were great friends. He hasn't got anybody particular himself, so he's like a son to us since Philippe died... But you don't want to stand here listening to an old woman twittering – you want your brother – come in, come through!"

A hall dark after the sunlight, a bigger room dark compared to the open door at the end, and Marie-Elise was ushering her out into a garden: "He likes it out here on fine days..."

And–

– a little boy, small, stooped. Blue-black hair, pale face and great blank eyes with a hint of mongoloid eyelids...

"It's Anticles! What have you done to him!? _ Anticles!"_

"My dear-" Marie-Elise placed a hand quickly on Tiggy's arm. "_We_ haven't done anything to him. He – he was much worse than that when your brother came..."

_Much worse when-? What was she on about? _

"Bald, blind, mad and elephant-eared?" said Tiggy absently, crouching down. "Anticles..." she called softly. The little boy was turning, listening, moving towards her across grass studded with bright yellow dandelions...

_How strange that it was spring, when it should be the Last September..._

"Did Kingsley tell you?" Marie-Elise sounded horrified. "I shouldn't think you'd have needed a shock like that this morning-"

"Tell me? This morning?" Tiggy twisted round to stare up at her. "Mrs Faringdon," she said blankly, "he's been like that for sixteen years..."

_This witch – this grey-haired, respectable witch, was crying? Was crying over Anticles? Over the tortured remnant of a Death Eater's son...? _

There was a very gentle hand on her shoulder; the little boy was coming nearer. There was no sight in those dark eyes, there was no sign of much reason behind them, but–

"Cles? It's Tiggy. Have you been good?"

"My dear..." The older woman seemed lost for words. "Your brother didn't tell us that..."

"He – didn't – tell – you – that – ?" Tiggy lifted the familiar weight that was Anticles onto her hip, and stared, puzzled, from his blank eyes to Mrs Faringdon's tear-filled ones. "I – I don't understand?"

"Your other brother. Didn't – Kingsley didn't tell you that either? My dear," Marie-Elise shook her head slightly as Tiggy stared without a word, "they've both been here since last summer."

It – it could not be true.

She could feel Anticles' hand patting her face, she could hear Mrs Faringdon, but Tiggy could only see Rax: _Rax as Antigone had not let her think of him in the Darkness – in the attic with no cloak and no bread and – no Tiggy coming back. And he must have set off – Merlin alone knew how he had managed to transfigure that curse-scorched cloak to cover him and Anticles – but why here...?_

_They too must have walked..._

"... and there was this man on the doorstep, and he said: 'Is Philippe Faringdon here?' Well-" Marie-Elise shrugged helplessly. "When somebody asks for your son who's been dead ten years, you don't instantly say 'I'm sorry, he's dead' – you've stopped thinking about it like that... So Hubert said 'Why?' and – your brother – he said 'Because I'm Artaxerxes Sutch's grandson and he's the only Auror I can possibly trust...'"

_The only Auror he could possibly trust...?_

"...We should have realised who he was, because Hubert had been friends with Artaxerxes Sutch from Hogwarts_– _but we hadn't seen him for years, other than the odd owl at Christmas, not– not since he came to ask Philippe's help for de-cursing a book of Dark Magic or something..."

_That book... _

Tiggy stared at Marie-Elise in dimly stirring comprehension.

_Rax __had known about that book – had known they had it, known why they had it – and he had started to say not Grandfather, but F-_

"...Philippe – wasn't here..." Marie-Elise finished her thought.

_The book that was in no way a friend or companion – had been after all – the very last connection out of the Darkness... _

"...but Hubert said 'He's dead' – and your brother just suddenly leaned on the porch wall-"

_The hard stone porch wall at the very end of everything... _and Tiggy knew what he had said: "Then it's all over."

_When the very last move you can make ends in nothing, it's all over. _

_**Shah i mat.**_

_But it seemed that this was only where the king was castled – _

"...used this as his base since he's been on the run from the Taboo..."

– _and that is always the last row of the chess board. _

Tiggy stared about.

_Perhaps it did make sense – that when a pawn had played as far as it possibly could, right through the Dark ranks, it could begin again in this sunlit place..._

"...we _made_ them stay," Marie-Elise was saying, "and then we found Anticles had been cursed, and Hubert's a Healer – he's on night shift at St. Mungo's now, since they dismissed all the muggle-born healers, even though he's meant to be retired – so he's done what he could, and Kingsley helped remove some of the worse disfigurement and time-freezing hexes, but the mind and the eye damage was too great..."

_A chess piece in playing gets worn; some pieces, even well-mended, are not quite right ever again – but a pawn only needs to move to the next square – a blind pawn could feel its way._

Tiggy sat down on the wooden garden bench, and shuffled Cles onto her knee. "A pawn goes 'One!', hey, Cles?"

_Bump, bump, bump. _"One – one – one..."

Somebody was moving faster than that – a frantic succession of pounding footsteps inside the house – and then there was somebody in the doorway who too knew how pawns moved, what it was to move through the Dark ranks to the depths of despair and come out into the Light...

_And all Sutches now looked like that..._

Antigone Sutch got to her feet. For others the crying and the embracing and the joyful exclamations. She had seen them all that morning at Hogwarts. She could only smile – and smile – and smile at her brother.

"Hello Rax."

**~:~:~:~**

_**A/N: Castling: a king who has stayed in his post until checked, ie point blank risk of capture, may escape by switching to the far side of one of the rooks on the last row of the board. And if you go to the Cotswolds, and walk over the fields from Hidcote Bartrim to Hidcote Manor, you will be on the footpath, and pass the Faringdons' house itself.**_

_**But this is not the end! In an important game, you must read the 'Game record.' **_

_**Final chapter. Here. Now.**_


	12. Game record

Game record

The Minister for Magic looked across his desk at the pale-faced witch in the shabby robes, and then continued reading out the notes from the open file. "This meeting is to inform you we have finished reviewing your case. It is fully confirmed that you were placed under an _imperius_ curse by Bellatrix Lestrange in the first week of last June, date uncertain. Therefore, none of your subsequent actions were in fact your responsibility, up to the point at which you broke the curse on the night of the 1st of May." He smiled across at the impassive face. "In short, there is no case to answer; you are not guilty of any crime. Your actions after that date have been eminently commendable. There is no further problem."

Antigone Sutch inclined her head in acknowledgement. "It was very kind of you to look into the case personally, Minister."

Kingsley Shacklebolt sighed. There were so many cases to review at present, so many for both criminals and victims, but this one had bothered him. "I have, in fact, looked into your entire case history, Miss Sutch," he said slowly and sadly. "From the reports both you and your brother Mr Abraxus Sutch have given, it seems to me both the wizarding government and magical society at large have repeatedly failed you."

"My father was used and murdered by the Dark side, who then took their revenge on my mother by torturing my younger brother. The government tortured my father into betraying the names of his fellows, admittedly criminals, and then left him open to their retaliatory attack. Our house and property were confiscated for 'compensation,' and all Healers refused to attend, let alone treat, my dying mother." Tiggy looked up calmly. "Yes, I think I would agree with you there, Minister."

The Minister was silent for a minute. "Is there anything which can be done?" he asked heavily.

Tiggy smiled gently at him. "No, thank you. You can't change the past. And you can hardly blame Rax or I for growing up feeling that the Sutches have never been wanted, and therefore wishing to mind our own business."

Kingsley leaned forward. "There must be _something_ I can do for you, Miss Sutch. Surely?"

"But you _have_ done something-"

"Reviewed your case?"

"You have acquitted me," Tiggy corrected. "And you let me go free until the case could be reviewed, which was kinder than you would know, as I have a childhood horror of small, dark cells underground. But more than that," she added as Kingsley made a sharp exclamation, "you took note of the case; you have listened, you have talked to me now, and been kind enough to call my very long walk that morning commendable. Other people would have asked more questions before taking me to their safe house. It has been very nice to find and know there is somebody who thinks more about Right than Justice."

"So if that makes the difference," said Kingsley paternally, smiling his slight embarrassment away, "what is it that you are going to do now, Miss Sutch?"

"Go home. Yes. Back to the attic and Knockturn."

"No!" The Minister looked outraged. "Miss Sutch – building a new world is impossible and therefore doomed to failure; but we are at least trying to make a fresh start, to correct some of the mistakes and problems. You do not have to be excluded – there must be a better place for you somewhere... The sheer determination you showed that morning in getting to Hogwarts would make you suitable for probably a dozen of the posts I am trying to get filled here at the Ministry." He smiled at her in exasperation. "Life is wider than your attic!"

It was Tiggy's turn to speak slowly and sadly. "And it can be far worse, too. I know what I have done, Minister." She pointed to the file on the desk. "All those things – just because you are _Imperiused_ does not mean you do not know something of what you are doing. The best that I can do after that _is_ to go home. Not as in to lock myself away – just that it will be a nice and restful change. And I am _needed_ there: I have Anticles to look after. And what your side has done for him is about the kindest thing ever. He isn't _mad_ any more, he's just not quite all there. He's actually growing a little, and taking a great interest in chess pieces – Rax thinks he may be able to carve, in the end. He won't frighten people now. And on top of that," she finished warmly, "you have given us Grandfather's friends back – in spite of Long Ago. So thank you."

Tiggy rose as Shacklebolt folded up the papers. "There would be one thing, Minister. You could _not_ prosecute me for not reporting Benait and Ali's dragon egg smuggling habits – I do have to live next door to them."

The Minister stood up with a hearty laugh, and shook hands. "If you will remember that should Right rather than Justice no longer need you at home, there will always be a job that needs your determination somewhere, then I am sure you can forget the dragon eggs."

~:~

Down Diagon, up Knockturn and through a door without looking – this time there was a good reason to hurry. The boys would need feeding. There would be a proper beef stew for dinner. The Minister had ensured the 'compensation' confiscated after Father's death had been returned to them. It had probably come out of someone else's property, but it was nice not to be destitute any more.

Tiggy stopped, and lit her wand. It worked better now, as if wrenching it and her mind out of Bellatrix Lestrange's power had forged a bond between them. She stood for a moment in the pool of light and listened. The faint growls of Anticles' current posse of six marbles sounded from three floors above. That meant Rax must be carving a complicated piece, and didn't need someone pestering for a spare block to play with. And that meant the pawns from the set must be finished, and would need her to polish them.

And that – was good enough.

Antigone Sutch started up her stairs with a smile.

**~:~Game Finished~:~**

_A/N: There will be a very different tale covering the same timespan in DH coming up soon, inspired by a quote from Remus Lupin this time, rather than Sirius Black:_

"_**There are other wand makers," said Lupin. "But Ollivanders were the best." Who were these other wand makers? Where were they? And what happened to them in the war?**_

_Look out for 'Blood Status' over the next couple of weeks!_


End file.
